"first_hit_page_url" is empty

[sajithtg]

I am troubleshooting the issue of excessive number of visits reported under "None" bucket within "Direct" and "Paid Search" marketing channels. Upon researching the raw data feeds, I notice that all of these visits are connected with empty values in the field "first_hit_page_url". As the name indicates, this field stores the first visited page url in a unique visit. Just wondering in what circumstances this value can become empty? Is it because of Javascript disabled browsers / devices? What is the alternate option to mitigate this issue?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

first_hit_page_url isn't the first page of the visit, it's the first URL of the visitor (in their lifetime). It's possible that this field didn't exist way back on the user's very first visit to the site? Or maybe there were tracking issue way back then.....

I believe the field you should be looking at is visit_start_page_url

[sajithtg]

Ok thanks. Do you know how exactly Adobe Analytics sets these variables like visit_start_page_url and visit_start_pagename? I believe the eVars and Props contain only the page_url and pagename which are specific to the occurrence (or server call), but finding the page_url and pagename at the starting of every visit will be done internally by Adobe using some rollup / calculation logic? I am seeing that some records are missing the visit_start_pagename value during the course of this rollup process. Could you please clarify? Thanks

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hahah I wish I knew the exact logic to how the values were set  

I just use the Raw Data Column resource to support our data team and knew there was a difference between "first" and "visit"

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/export/analytics-data-feed/data-feed-contents/data...

In theory, these values should be set on the first hit of the visit.. but I wonder if the first hit happens to an s.tl() (web) or trackAction (mobile app) call (which does not include Page Name or URL could be causing some issues with the data?

What does your visit referrer show? Or can you isolate that user and all the hits with the same visit_num and see if the fields are set in any row?

Also, make sure that you are not looking at rows that should be excluded, look at how exclude_hit works and make sure that you aren't looking at those... those rows likely don't correlate ALL the info, since they shouldn't be included in your reporting anyway (I would hate for you to be going down a rabbit hole in your investigation only to find out that the data isn't relevant)