How do I exclude URL query parameters from the URLs tracked, and from Pages reports?

It is common that websites use URLs query parameters or session ID parameters that are not relevant to data analysis (unique ID, meaningless parameter).

You can easily ignore a number of parameters from the URLs, and prevent them from appearing in the « Behavior > Pages » report. Login as the Super User, go to Administration > Websites > Settings > Global list of Query URL parameters to exclude field.

Each Matomo (Piwik) admin user can also exclude query parameters for specific websites, by entering them in the Excluded Parameters list for this website, in Administration > Websites > Manage.

If you are using Matomo for WordPress, then you can configure the query parameters directly in WordPress by going to Matomo Analytics => Settings => Exclusions.

For example take this URL path: hello.html?module=peace&vid=476tgkg. If you configure Matomo to exclude the URL parameter vid from Page Urls then the URL will be tracked as: hello.html?module=peace.

To exclude multiple parameters, specify each parameter on a new line, for example to exclude two parameters:

vid
sessionid

You can also exclude all URL parameters from being tracked using the following regular expression:

/.*/

This will remove every parameter from the URLs tracked in Matomo.

When you specify any new parameters to exclude from your URLs, note that it will only affect data going forward. (URL parameters will not be removed from your historical data and reports)