Segment to capture visits with a change in evar value, without knowing what the evar value is/was.

[darrynk23768843]

Is it possible to create a segment where I compare values of an evar to previous values of the evar, and then to only include visits where the evar has changed. Basically, I want all visits where an evarN.value != previous_evarN.value for a visit. Since I won't know what the previous value of evarN was, I can't set it specifically using "equals" and then use a "not equals".

[brian_au · Accepted solution]

Hi Darryn,

You can try to use sequential segmentation on one level to attack, but as you note you have to know which specific eVar values are in play to specify the change from eVar X to eVar Y. There is not a way out of the box in Adobe Analytics that allows for wildcard detection of changes evarN.value != previous_evarN.value. However you could enhance your implementation to set a custom traffic value of the switch occurrence (evarX|eVarY) or set a custom event and then that would allow you to discern the switch occurrences. If you went with the custom traffic variable then you could also use Rule Builder and classify the occurrences into different dimension slices i.e. (eVarX Start Switches grouped together, eVarY End Switches grouped together).

If this is a one off exercise and you have access to the entire raw clickstream for your site that is a big data type exercise that would allow you to analyze, but this is outside the Adobe Analytics interface. If you have access to the Data Workbench solution (formerly Insight) that also would be a way to analyze this type of data trend.

Best,

Brian