Visitor ID's being re-used | Community
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Meghan_Powers
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Meghan_PowersCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
May 3, 2024
Question

Visitor ID's being re-used

  • May 3, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 2732 views

According to Adobe documentation, Adobe Visitor ID's/cookies expire after 2 years. Or for customers who delete their cookies, the Visitor ID can be re-used after 1 year, but not if it's within 1 year.
We're seeing (a small percent) of visitor ID's show up again with the same visit numbers after only a few days or weeks.
So visitor id 123abc with visit number = 1 might show up for 3/1/24 and then again on 4/30/24, we'll see the same visitor id with visit num = 1 again.
Does anyone why this would be happening?

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2 replies

k6ivupuu_k
k6ivupuu_k
Level 2
May 5, 2024

Perhaps the question is not clear, but are you not describing just a normal visitor visiting your pages on different days?

 

1. Day 1 I accept cookies when visiting your site (1 visitor, 1 visit)

2. Day 2 I visit again - 1 visitor, 2 visits.

 

Visitor ID remains the same to be able to aggregate visits per cookie (or visitor ID or whatever). 

 

Meghan_Powers
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Meghan_PowersCommunity Advisor and Adobe ChampionAuthor
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
May 5, 2024

We are seeing the same visitor id with the same visit number repeat itself sometimes after a few days or weeks.  So we'll see visitorid 123abc and visit num = 1 come on one day and then a few days or weeks later we'll see the same visitorid 123abc appear in Adobe with visit num = 1 again.  

Jennifer_Kunz
Adobe Champion
Jennifer_KunzAdobe Champion
Adobe Champion
May 7, 2024

Is this the built-in Visit Number dimension, rather than the now-not-really-needed getVisitNum plugin?
And by Visitor ID, are you referring to the ECID (or MID or whatever we're calling it today), copied into a prop or eVar? 

Meghan_Powers
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Meghan_PowersCommunity Advisor and Adobe ChampionAuthor
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
May 8, 2024

This is the out of box Visit num, and not the ECID in an eVar, but Adobe's out of box Visitor ID.

    Jennifer_Kunz
    Adobe Champion
    Jennifer_KunzAdobe Champion
    Adobe Champion
    May 8, 2024

    Well, shucks. Had it been the plugin, that would have been as easy solve (the plugin is based on a cookie that doesn't last long on safari).
    How do you get the Visitor ID? It's (annoyingly) not generally available in reporting without folks doing something custom. 

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