:? Piwik 1.4 No Statistics with Internet Explorers

Support & Bugs
21

Yea, it is a huge change. However, I dont want you to be alarmed by it, because I’m using Piwik in an unconventional way (as a third party embed).

I didnt add anything to the source code. I’m using a convoluted, hacky way of resolving this.
see 301 Moved Permanently

Anyways, the hacky way involves putting the piwik analytics code into a file(whatever.js), setting a mod_rewrite rule to always serve the file whenever the url matches something like http:// myserver/trackit/…, then including javascript in the openx adtag to write a 1x1 iframe with said url, and appending url params containing top.document.referrer and top.location.href, and modifying the piwik analytics code in the file to use/honor these params using setCustomUrl() etc. Also setting a P3P header similar to what Openx uses (its a standard compact string like CUR ADM OUR NOR STA NID)

If you read the previous paragraph, you’ll agree that this is a hack, and not an elegant one. It creates hurdles at the same time as it solves the above.

Before this hack, what I would have done is to add the piwik analytics code into the append/prepend area of a banner/zone on openx. No iframes involved. The ad itself was served via openx js tags(again no iframes), and I was missing all the IE visitors.

So again, unconventional case (which might start becoming conventional as ppl clamour to get ad stats beyond what an ad server provides).
If you’ve noticed recently at adTech, Google Analytics had a bigger presence than doubleclick/Adsense. They’re really pushing for analytics in advertising and there are tons of people hungry for that sort of data, i.e. where was my ad served, what article, what demographic of ppl viewed it, etc)

I’ve been using a similar hack for a while with google analytics, but I think they dont allow things like setCustomUrl(), so it muddies the data collected.

re demo.piwik.org “but maybe these are not all visits?”

Perhaps the % of IE visitors on demo.piwik are verifiable by another authority (or access logs)?

For the site I had the hack on, the number of IE visitors were more than FF/Chrome/safari (as seen on the second attachment) and that seems to be a more realistic percentage for my site.

Also, the total number of “browser types” was 64 (which is quite high compared to the demo.piwik as well). I’m assuming these arent bots, as the bot tracker plugin only shows 3 bots regularly visiting my site.

22

Hi,
in my case the website is pretty conventional and quite small, but I noticed a huge change in IE-related visits by moving to the image tracking method. Let us say that most of the IE visits were not tracked before. I cannot say since when the problem was there. I can say that I noticed I had a problem in the last weeks. At the beginning I though it was due to the holiday season, but then I understood there was something else going on (I have picture galleries on my website and friends were telling me “you know, I’ve seen the last pictures, they are great”, but I could see no visits on these galleries…).
During the week-end I might be able to set up a test page and try different IE security configurations on it (with my current configuration my visits are tracked normally…). I’ll let you know if I discover anything.

Regards,
Alberto

23

Hi,
I was able to do a quick test: it looks like IE9 visits are tracked fine if the security level is set to medium-high in internet options (the ones for internet sites). Visits are not tracked if you set it to high.
Matt, you might want to try this on your test website.

Regards,
Alberto

24

[quote=aferrante]
Hi,
in my case the website is pretty conventional and quite small, but I noticed a huge change in IE-related visits by moving to the image tracking method. Let us say that most of the IE visits were not tracked before. [/quote]

When you put the image tracking tag, it will start tracking bots to your website, and many bots disguise as IE, so this may not be true.

25

Thanks for this test, I was able to replicate, infact it seems IE with Security setting to “high” does not allow for document.write, therefore we can’t do much and it is expected that Piwik is not tracked with such setting…

26

rakshan, thanks for your explanations, I think the data discrepency is definitely linked to the way you are using Piwik (cross domain tracking) and would not affect standard Piwik usage. Maybe we could add a config setting that would set the P3P header for your use case. Feel free to create a ticket in dev.piwik.org thx

27

Matt,
sure, you are right, but what I observed yesterday was an increment in the visits of a picture gallery that I recently published (say from 10 to 40 visits): I doubt bots are so many and they are all visiting the same gallery by “clicking” on random pictures.

Regards,
Alberto

[quote=matt]

[quote=aferrante]
Hi,
in my case the website is pretty conventional and quite small, but I noticed a huge change in IE-related visits by moving to the image tracking method. Let us say that most of the IE visits were not tracked before. [/quote]

When you put the image tracking tag, it will start tracking bots to your website, and many bots disguise as IE, so this may not be true.[/quote]

28

Hello
Guys,

Last week, I found the problem.
In my company we created an alias for my Piwik´s server like this: http://alias/piwik/ so in my JavaScript Tracking code I had this:


var pkBaseURL = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://alias/piwik/" : "http://alias/piwik/");

Some IE´s have registered in my piwk and the others browsers(Safari,Opera,Firefox and etc) have always registered too, but the most of IE´s haven´t registered so I changed my Javascript Tracking code to appoint without alias:


var pkBaseURL = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://server:8080/piwik/" : "http://server/:8080piwik/");

It worked and my statistics came back normal as can you see the image bellow.
Of course the problem is cross domain, but why some IE´S could registered and most of them didn´t ?

Thanks
Raphael Milani

29

Hi,
I do not think mine is a cross-domain problem.
A couple of days ago I noticed that also some Safari visits are not tracked: I can say this for sure as some users registered for an even on a website I am managing (based on Drupal). I have their registration, but I have nothing in the Piwik statistics about their visits at the times they registered. I am also sure they are using a Mac with Safari…

Regards,
Alberto

[quote=ramilani12]
In my company we created an alias for my Piwik´s server like this: http://alias/piwik/ so in my JavaScript [
It worked and my statistics came back normal as can you see the image bellow.
Of course the problem is cross domain, but why some IE´S could registered and most of them didn´t ?

Thanks
Raphael Milani[/quote]