Products disappear from the AT recommendations catalog

[Franc_G]

Hi all, I have observed quite a strange behaviour. I am sending product information using a similar method to below. Products can be found using advanced search, but after approximately 2h these products disappear from catalog. I am populating the entity.geofocus property to enable segmentation (setting to "recs poc").

I can't figure out what is causing disappearance. Example of the payload is provided below. I would appreciate if some could help me to figure this one out. Thank you.

function targetPageParams() {
   return {
      "entity": {
         "id": "32323",
         "categoryId": "running-shoes",
         "value": 119.99,
         "inventory": 329
      }
   }
}

[kandersen]

I've not previously experienced that products are dissapearing, however, I'm not a fan of the product catalgoue and the search functionality. I've experienced previously that when searching it isn't finding a product despite it actually being there. 

A way to validate that the products are actually there could be to create a custom algorithm, which is 'hardcoded' to only show the products that you specifically a looking for.

Let me know if it doesn't make any sense!

[abhinavpuri]

Hi @Franc_G ,

I have also encountered this issue, Products don't appear in catalogue while still being there.
I did spent too much time troubleshooting and realized this is not an issue from my feeds/implementation.

One Method that worked for me was - If you inspect network tab when on Catalogue section, You can see an API endpoint used by Adobe Target to fetch products. I replicated the same cURL on Postman and was able to see all products by updating some parameters in requests.

[Franc_G]

So an interesting observation in here - only first product instance is being passed on to catalog. The product appears to be identified by "entity.id". Any subsequent product instances with different entity parameter values are being removed. Example:

- we make a product request with the "entity.id" = 5093 and "entity.geoFocus" = "UK"

subsequent product request with
- we make a product request with the "entity.id" = 5093 and "entity.geoFocus" = "DE"

Only the first instance appears in the catalog. ie product instances (with slightly different entity prameter values) are not being retained in the catalog. This observation is based on my testing. Would be good if someone could confirm this behaviour.  

[kandersen]

Hi @Franc_G 

Well, entity.id are unique and is considered to be the product sku - so when you send in the subsequent product request with the same entity.id, then you're updating the product sku. In other words it will overwrite the value UK with the value DE.

It is not clear to me whether you're are seeing the behaviour i describe above or you're not seeing any changes to the parameters tied to the entity.id?

Be aware that when updating an entity.id, then it will take some processing time. Here are more details on how long it takes for the changes to be reflected: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/target/using/recommendations/recommendations-faq/recommen...

[Franc_G]

Hi @kandersen, I see that the original value "entity.geoFocus" = "UK" being preserved while subsequent hits (with "DE", "IE" etc.) are shown for about 2h and then they disappear from catalog. If I perform search the next day, the initial instance ("UK") is being returned in the catalog. Instances where geoFocus was set to "DE", "IE" etc. are missing.

I did some more testing - I manually emptied the catalog and then send some more hits. The only way to record a hit is to remove the old one manually.

[kandersen]

Regarding the value not being preserved. Can you rule out that someone else is sending in updates with the UK value?
I don't see a scenario where the system rolls back to the previous/original value. However, it is a classic case that if you're testing in production and you're changing settings to DE and then afterwards someone else visits the same page but with the UK value - this will then cause what you're experiencing in the catalogue, as they will be sending a new update entity.id after you updated it to the DE value.

Even if you're not testing in production, do someone else have access to the test environment who could be sending in the UK value.

[Franc_G]

@kandersen Good point! I guess the only way to find out is to push the changes into PROD. 

[kandersen · Accepted solution]

Well, you most likely have the same issue in production. So it really depends on what it is that you're trying to validate. 

If you're validating that Recs is updating attributes as expected, then you need to isolate your test, so you don't risk anyone else is potentially sending different updates into the product/entity.id.

From what you've explained so far, I'm not seeing anything that indicates that Recs is behaving out of the ordinary