Google keyword match modifiers issue

Support & Bugs
1

Why does matomo remove broad match modifier (e.g. plus sign) from keyword and replace it with space character? Is it expected behavior or a bug?
Saving keyword modifiers is necessary for analytics purposes.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497836?hl=en
I’m using Matomo 3.6.0

2

Hi,

I am not sure what exactly you are talking about?

Do you mean that Matomo replaces + signs with spaces in virtual-drums.com - Web Analytics Reports - Matomo?

3

Hi, thanks for reply.
This screenshot of matomo_log_visit table. First five records have double spaces between words - each extra space character is replaced plus sign (broad match modifier).

  • Example keyword: +women’s +hats
  • Example search: hats for women

Second five records don’t have any extra spaces because it’s default match type.

4

@Lukas I hope I’ve explained myself well in previous reply.
May I ask you if you have confirmed the bug or not?

5

Hi, @Lukas
The source of issue is urldecode function:

log_visit.campaign_keyword

MarketingCampaignsReporting/Campaign/CampaignDetector.php:83
        $valueFromRequest = trim(urldecode($valueFromRequest));

log_visit.referer_keyword

Referrers/Columns/Base.php:244
        protected function detectCampaignFromString($string) {...

Menu “Acquisition → Campaigns”, Campaign Keywords widget

DataTable/Filter/SafeDecodeLabel.php:42
        $raw = urldecode($value);

It’s intented behaviour as documentation says:

Returns a string in which all non-alphanumeric characters except -_. have been replaced with a percent ( % ) sign followed by two hex digits and spaces encoded as plus ( + ) signs. It is encoded the same way that the posted data from a WWW form is encoded, that is the same way as in application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type. This differs from the » RFC 3986 encoding (see rawurlencode()) in that for historical reasons, spaces are encoded as plus (+) signs.

So urldecode consider plus sign as space sign and decode it accordingly.
But in this case the result is incorrect and undesirable cause +women’s +hats and women’s hats are different search keywords.
Should I open issue with that on github?

6

Hi,

Thanks for looking into it. It would be great if you could open a github issue.

7

Thanks for your notes and research, very appreciated. i re-posted your comment in the issue at:https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/issues/13467