Duplicate visitors after update to 2.15

Hi all,

nee your help pls. After updating to 2.15 suddenly a few (not all!) visitors are counted double or more or the visits are being split up into e.g. several visits. Thereby the stats are getting wrong since too many visits are being created. The error occurs from clicks via paid google ads. as far as i can see.

The first click is related to Campaign - "www.google.de"
the next ones are referring to Campaign -"www.landways.de"
the last one again refers to Campaign - “www.google.de

Nothing had been changed in adwords incl. the campaign parameters but for some reason Piwik now splits the visits. Pls see attached example.

We had a lot problems with click fraud in the past but this seemed to be over. Maybe we have this problem again but the different refferals are strange. Why is it google and / or our own domain sometimes?

Any idea / hint / help appreciated. Thanks beforehand.
dn

By default Piwik will create a new visit whenever a visitor views your website using a different campaign information from the visitor’s ongoing visit. You can disable this behavior by setting create_new_visit_when_campaign_changes=0 under [Tracker] section in your config/config.ini.php file.

https://piwik.org/faq/how-to/faq_19616/

Thanks a lot. not sure if i got it. Is it a new feature in this version? So far we dont have a Tracker section in the config ini file so i will add it.

“whenever a visitor views your website using a different campaign information from the visitor’s ongoing visit” - does that mean if he clicks the ad several times during his visit (click fraud) it will not be shown anymore? Then i am unable to identify the unwanted visitors.

Sorry bothering and appreciate your help very much. Thank you.
dn

[size=large]** Just noted that the error is still present after updating the config ini respectively. **[/size]

After trying the recommended setting the problem still exist. Thought it was caused by wrong target url setting in the paid ads and changed all ads from http:// to https:// setting but this did not solve the problem either.

If an ad is clicked piwik registers 2 visits and two links being recorded at the same time e.g :

http://dp.g.doubleclick.net/apps/domainpark/domainpark.cgi?r=m&fexp=21404,2631661&client=dp-sedo81_3ph&channel=tmplt-001,exp-0051,exp-0093,auxa-control-2,405539&hl=de&adtest=off&type=0&kw=offroad%20fahren&drid=

https://www.landways.de/html/offroadtraining-overview.html?pk_campaign=suche_train&gclid=CNT-8Pzv6cgCFQgGwwodvGEH1g

The respective visit as per attached picture.

next steps create new visits again. pls see visit4.jpg attached

appreciate any idea/help. Thanks - dn

Anyone please?

Do you use the advancedCampaignReporting plugin? http://plugins.piwik.org/AdvancedCampaignReporting

Here is how to troubleshoot further: enable debugging for your Piwik: Tracking HTTP API: API Reference - Matomo Analytics (formerly Piwik Analytics) - Developer Docs - v3
then open the campaign URL in a new “private window”. Check the output for the piwik.php request -> what does it say?

I checked the advanced campaign reporting and tried to debug the tracker without result. But i found out that first the referrer reports campaign - www.google.de and in the next step if visitor goes further it reports campaign - www.landways.de
thereby creating a second visit.
I changed the tracking code to all variations possible and also used and older tracking code. no change. also the rewrite cond in htaccess do not seem to be the problem.
any idea welcome. thks a lot

still trying to find the bug. the rewrite conditions in htaccess obviously arent the problem. It must be something which changes the referrer fm original to www.landways.de when doing the first action (click) on the landing page.

thks for any suggestions. dn

can u pls specify how to do that? I can create the bug by opening an google ad in the serps but i dont get error logs although i use logviewer / monolog.

installed plugins:
advanced campaign reporting
monolog
logviewer

… thks for help - dirk

anyone any idea please? Tanks a lot for helping out.

Ok - last try here. Would really appreciate any idea. thanks a lot.

Hi there, can you check that you use latest version of your browser, as well as latest version of Piwik. Do you still experience this issue? if so please create bug report @ Issues · matomo-org/piwik · GitHub to make sure we will follow up, thanks!

Matthieu, thks for help so far.

Yesterday I hv copied a very old version of the tracker script on the website and the bug is appearantly gone. I was not even sure if this script would work with the actual release but it does and all counts are correct now. We can not use the piwik generated website tracking script but only this version. So a bug might still be there i am afraid.