Multiple visitor profiles for same IP across sub-domains

Support & Bugs
1

Not sure if it’s a bug or by design. I have Piwik tracking our main domain (www) and a sub-domain (edu). I noticed that Piwiki treats same IP/visitor as separate visitor - creating separate profile for them when they visit main site and sub-domain. See screenshot.


<script type="text/javascript">
  var _paq = _paq || [];
  _paq.push(["setCookieDomain", "*.domain.net"]);
  _paq.push(["setDomains", ["*.domain.net"]]);
  _paq.push(['setDocumentTitle', "WWW: " + document.title]);
  _paq.push(['trackPageView']);
  _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']);
  (function() {
    var u=(("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https" : "http") + "://analytics.domain.net/";
    _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'piwik.php']);
    _paq.push(['setSiteId', 1]);
    var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; g.type='text/javascript';
    g.defer=true; g.async=true; g.src=u+'piwik.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s);
  })();
</script>

Following instructions, I think I did set it up correctly to enable sub-domain tracking.

Is this an issue or by design?

2

Yes it is by design. Though it can be possible to use User ID to set a user id Accurate User Detection cross devices: User ID (set in JS and all other clients) · Issue #3490 · matomo-org/matomo · GitHub (coming next release)

piwik tracks unique visitors by default using first party cookie that are unique for each sub domain

3

This is great, thanks Matt. Looking forward to the new version and testing this.