If I have a link to a page in addition to that same page with customized GET params, it seems link counting for the GET-parameterized versions get folded into the bare URL. For example, I can link to Google’s search page or to a specfic searchterm or two. I would count those links as all very distinct. It seems that — at least on our site, at least for a different webpage — clicks on the ?q= links count as clicks onto the non-parameterized URL and none of the parameterized versions show a click counter (not even a unified one as another link to the base URL does).
This post is something of a trial of a MWE; If you’re reading this please try clicking on some of the links above. I’m curious if this the behavior we’re seeing on our site.
No, the click counts that now appear are indeed evidence of the problem: they’re only appearing on the links to the base /search URL. There are no click counts appearing on the search/term/two links.
I noticed this because we conducted a multilingual survey on our site. There was an https://example.com/survey link, and then also a handful of https://example.com/survey?lang=af-za and ?lang=ar-ae and such. Obviously we collected the actual information from the external site and know that many took the survey in other languages, but the click counters on the post itself looked quite funny and gave a deceiving appearance.