Same ECID captured for different Brower

[S_K_3_11]

It would be great if anyon can help me understand in which scenario adobe analytics captures same ecid for different browser

[abhinavbalooni]

Hey @S_K_3_11 

This can happen in case of explicitly setting same ecid across two setups. For instance, from an app to a webview or from an app to an external link that opens on a browser on your mobile device.

For instance, you have an app and you have a screen in the app which opens in a default browser, in case of iphone, safari, hence you would see Apple under browser. Then, in the same app, if you have another link which opens your website in a browser, and this time you select chrome, you would see Google as browser type. Both the times, your development team might be appending ECID to the url which tells Analytics to grab the ecid value from the url and use that instead of creating a new ECID.

This is usually done to track a user's journey across app and web.

Hope the above helps.

Cheers,

Abhinav

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Agreed. The ECID can be passed using the AppendVisitorIdsTo (https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/id-service/using/id-service-api/methods/appendvisitorid.html...)

ECID passed in the URL would then be read by the Visitor ID service and used on the destination.. 

[S_K_3_11]

Thanks for the reply. However, in our case, Adobe Analytics is only implemented for websites and we captured ECID using an extension.

[abhinavbalooni]

Hey @S_K_3_11 

I just noticed the metric count now. It is showing up as 2 unique visitors for all of these entries. If it woulf have been the ECID being the same across the two browsers, the count should have been 1 overall and 1 each for the browsers.

Is there any other identity being set in the setup ? Like a visitor id (vid) ?

Cheers,

Abhinav

[S_K_3_11]

I observed that both the user IDs are different and they visited our website from different cities. Does this mean ecid values are not unique?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I'm assuming that User ID in this case is your system's Logged in User ID... technically speaking that shouldn't impact the ECID.. 

ECIDs are unique, Adobe uses different ways to identify a user:

• ECID (Visitor Service)
• s_vi (site based cookie)
• s_fid (fallback user id - this is sort of a temporary identifier, used when Cookie Opt Out has occurred, to stitch the user during the session, then it dies)

[Jennifer_Dungan]

That's a good catch @abhinavbalooni .. if Adobe was seeing the same ECID, it should be treated as 1 UV...

How are you capturing the ECID value? Is it possible that somehow the code you are using to grab the ECID could be getting a cached version from another user? Causing issues with your custom dimension?

The safest way to capture the ECID in your tracking is to use Dynamic Variables.

This is where you use the D= designation, and specify what value to duplicate... since the ECID in the tracking call is "mid", you can use "D=mid" to take the value as Adobe is seeing/setting the value for tracking, and duplicate that value into your dimension.

[S_K_3_11]

Hi @Jennifer_Dungan ,

Yes, the user ID is the website-specific user profile number. I used it to confirm both uses are different. 

currently, I am using an extension to capture ecid value. I will change it to "D=mid" as you recommended

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hmm interesting...  you would think an extension would be okay. May I ask which extension you are using? I'd be interested in taking a closer look at what this is doing, and if there's an issue with it, flag it to the appropriate people..... 

I hope that D=mid works better for you... but if there is still an issue, please let us know so we can keep trying to diagnose your problem.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Oh, I think I figured it out... hmm it's tied to the actual Experience Cloud ID Service extension... that really should work...   I was thinking that you were using some community built extension....

There may be something else going on.... 

[S_K_3_11]

Yes @Jennifer_Dungan i am using "experiencce cloud id service" extension

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Still try D=mid... and see if that makes a difference... I will think on this to see if there are other potential issues that could be happening... 

[abhinavbalooni]

Hey @S_K_3_11 

It seems that in the implementation somewhere, you might be passing a key like a generic value which stitches 2 or more Unique Visitors together. Now next what happens is, these two or more unique visitors's mcvid also get stitched to the same users.

@Jennifer_Dungan Jennifer thoughts ? I guess this seems to be a plausible explanation for the issue.

Cheers

Abhinav

[S_K_3_11 · Accepted solution]

Hi @abhinavbalooni , 

1. It is a straightforward implementation, where we capture ecid using an extension and store it in the data element. next, we configure it in every rule and set it against eVar for Adobe Analytics.
2. It is possible that one useid can have multiple ecid for a month where the user can browse through the website multiple times with multiple browsers/incognito mode

What I observed weird here is that 1 ecid have 2 unique visitor number and both have different city. 

@Jennifer_Dungan suggest i am going to set ecid using mid and will monitor data for next couple of days

[abhinavbalooni]

@S_K_3_11 Yeah right ! Totally skipped my mind. Lol... To get to the explanation my mind is working on overdrive. Ignore the multiple ecid breakdown bit but rest seems to be worth exploring.

[abhinavbalooni]

I might have gone to a different tangent here. I thought post my query you mentioned you are using user id to identify unique visitors using s.visitorId cause that is the only explanation to multiple Users with the same ECID. However, looking at your last comment, it seems to be not the case.

Try out @Jennifer_Dungan's suggestion and let us know how you go.

Cheers,

Abhinav

[Jennifer_Dungan]

One other thing.. is this a few isolated incidents? Or the norm?

It's possible that if this is a small number of occurrences, this could be the result of bot traffic?

Its possible that a bot could be hard-coding some of the values into the request string, causing a mismatch between the used ECID and the passed value in your custom dimension....For all we know, the biot may not even have an ECID being set, but only an s_vi or s_fid... and if they are trying to "spoof" being a real user, they may realize that your prop/eVar should be passing a value... so they store it and reuse it on subsequent hits....

[S_K_3_11]

You are right @Jennifer_Dungan it could be possible. Right now we have observed  around 10 ecids in December have multiple unique visitor count

In August we blocked this traffic using the user agent as we observed suspicious traffic coming form from some old browsers on our website. More than 30 ecids with multiple unique visitors were found every month before that.

Thanks for the direction.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

If you are talking 30 out of a few hundred... that's a lot... if it's 30 in a few million I would say those are outliers that you just have to try to exclude or accept... 

They are likely to be weird bot traffic that made it through your filters (it's almost impossible to catch all bots).