Beacon order - guaranteed??

[iamjasona]

Probably a bad question, but here goes.

Suppose I have a web page that fires two beacons in very close time proximity - within the same second, let's suppose.  Is the order of processing on the Adobe Analytics side guaranteed (in terms of hit number)?

We have a situation on a website where our Adobe Target developers are doing something that is causing two Adobe Analytics beacons to trigger on the entry of the visit.  At the same time this Adobe Target change was implemented, we're seeing a moderate spike in "Internal" marketing channel traffic, which I strongly suspect is due to this new behavior.   In my testing, though, the first beacon always seems to have the proper referrer setting.  However, if the second beacon (sent in very close time proximity) were to be processed first, then the referrer is the site's own domain, which would land the visit in the Internal channel.  Just wondering if hit order is guaranteed on Adobe's end.

Thanks, in advance, for any answers!   

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

Hit order isn't guaranteed. It all depends on which hit is "received" by Adobe's server(s) first, which depends on a whole slew of factors that are out of your control, e.g. network speed, network route, etc.

[iamjasona]

Thanks for your reply, yuhuisg. One clarification: given that the beacon represents a network transmission from the client to Adobe's servers, complete with a HTTP response code, isn't the order of these representative of which is received by Adobe servers first?

[yuhuisg]

@iamjasonayes, but the ordering depends on the timestamp when Adobe's server receives the hit, not the timestamp when the browser sends the hit. Note that when the browser receives the response is also subject to network traffic factors.

[PratheepArunRaj]

Dear Jason,

As said by Yu, Adobe Analytics data collection is not based on the hit time on your browser but the hit time at the Adobe Analytics Server. If you think there are issues, you can use data Feed to validate the Processing Order. That might help you to debug the issue further!

Thank You, Arun.

[iamjasona]

Thanks for adding your reply, as well, Arun!