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Mobile Browsers should not be classified as "None" in Browsers Report

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joe_was_taken
Level 5

7/28/11

Today the "Browsers" report, classifies mobile devices as "None".

 

Displaying "None" even when a User-Agent is clearly captured, represents a confusing and misleading end-user experience.

 

If anything, this behavior only breeds mistrust of all reported data.

 

At a minimum, the "Browsers" report should behave similar to the "Browsers Type" report by presenting an "Other".

 

None should be reserved for the instances where the user-agent is unavailable, obscure, or otherwise not reasonably classifiable.

29 Comments

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David_Goodes
Level 2

7/29/12

Couldn't agree more - in developing mobile sites that were functioning correctly for iOS / Android standard browsers, non-standard browsers (Firefox, Opera Mobile, Skyfire, Boat) had critical bugs.

 

Without specific numbers we do not know which to focus on, and cannot justify the effort to fix.

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ericmatisoff1
Level 9

8/9/12

Definitely a much-needed request. You can easily pull Mobile Browser in Google Analytics...

 

In addition, the knowledge base has conflicting reports as to whether this is possible:

The Browsers report KB article says v15 provides mobile browser data but v14 doesn't. However, the truth is, neither does.

The Mobile KB article says mobile browser is inaccessible.

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Jeroen_Jaspar
Level 2

9/20/12

I also talked with Clientcare about the difference between "Browser" and "Browser Type" report.

That all has to do with the "None" part.

You can correlate the "Browser" Report with "Mobile OS" and so have a complete list, but it isn't possible to do this with the "Browser" Type Report.

 

ClientCare responded: Currently this is working as we expect it to. 

This can be true, but I hope they take this Idea in next Release to make the two reports behave logical and not as strange as currently.

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danm84141867
Level 9

10/25/12

Our Browser report shows "None" as one of the top browser in many of our report suites. When I break that "None" down by user agent string, I see that almost all of them are mobile browsers. Please update the list of user agent strings used in the Browser report to include mobile browsers.

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bl87461
Level 1

10/31/12

I'm behind this.  Tablets and other mobile devices are moving towards becoming the primary computing device for a a significant number of people.

 

As a first step, taking the mobile browser out of the 'None' category is right, but we should also be looking to get more detail from the UA string or similar as well.

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Melissa_Kavanag
Level 2

1/20/13

Yes, I have numerous questions from users on this report because of the "none" category. I would be nice to just have it say "mobile."

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alex_stucky
Level 1

2/6/13

As user behavior shifts to mobile, it becomes ever more important to collect Mobile Browser.  SiteCatalyst does not collect Mobile Browser currently, and I would like to see that changed.  Why not collect this data?

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