Referral exclusions

thomas1499 · January 6, 2022, 10:08pm

There is still no solution and still no info from Matomo, how to solve this simple issue (simple option to save the first ref.)

adsham · January 10, 2022, 12:53pm

Hi @bmo - did you find a resolution to this?

We are now experiencing the same issue,

Thanks

thomas_matomo · January 12, 2022, 6:07am

Thanks for the input everyone. Could someone create a GitHub issue about this?

We’d be keen to look into this but we need to understand the problem / use case better and be great to hear how we could help.

thomas1499 · January 12, 2022, 6:40am

You “need to understand the problem”?

Paymentgateways delete the origin referrer, there needs to be a option: “only save the first referrer”

adsham · January 12, 2022, 10:43am

Hi Thomas

Thanks for picking this up! I think Przemyslaw’s post above (Referral exclusions - #11 by Mepherotus) outlines the issue sufficiently. The resolution suggested by Matomo in this article https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/how-do-i-add-a-referral-exclusion-in-matomo/ does not really address the underlying issue - it merely recategorizes the referrer from “website” to “direct entry”, which in reality isn’t the true referrer for the user’s visit.

Here is an example of what is happening.

User clicks on an email link to visit the website.
User browses website and adds items to basket (at this stage referrer is “Email campaign”)
User completes the order but the website redirects to 3rd party payment provider (paypal/amazon etc)
User returns to website (but now the referrer for the visit is reset from “Email campaign” to “website” or if you have set the referrer exclusions it will be set to “direct entry”. What we need is for it to remain as “Email Campaign”.

As a result we are over attributing the channel “direct entry” greatly (40% vs 15% on GA).

Please let me know if you need any further information.

Thanks
Adham

heurteph-ei · January 12, 2022, 5:01pm

Is it the same as

?

thomas_matomo · January 13, 2022, 4:02am

Thanks for this. I think I get it now.

I guess it’s not really excluding that referrer but more like “ignore that referrer” as excluding that referrer in Matomo would mean we wouldn’t track that request at all when they return to your site.

I think it should be possible to implement this as long as this happens in the same visit (within 30 minutes). What would we do if this didn’t happen within 30 minutes? Then we wouldn’t have the original referrer likely. Would we track a direct visit or use the referrer from the payment provider?

I have created https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/issues/18612 and scheduled this feature for now.

thomas1499 · January 13, 2022, 7:28am

Why not just a simple option: save first referrer?

adsham · January 17, 2022, 3:32pm

This issue is picking up a bit of traction in github https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/issues/18612 but could someone recreate the issue for Matthieu to demonstrate how this happening?

@thomas1499
@heurteph-ei
@Ivy_Ip
@bmo
@HankLin
@mikkop
@Mepherotus
@Hubert
@agnes
@tauschn

Many thanks!

MisterGenest · January 28, 2022, 12:24am

There’s some confusion here.

Matomo does indeed save the first referrer for a visit. Most of the cases users have described in this thread will not be attributed by Matomo as direct entry.

adsham · January 28, 2022, 11:47am

Thanks Genest - I agree there is some confusion, but it seems something is not working as it is intended.

In my case personal experience, I can confidently say the “direct entry” attribution is far too high using all of the Matomo attribution techniques.

Here is a monthly view

Here is a yearly view

Here is a segmented yearly view for new visitors (I wouldn’t expect new users to be showing such high direct entries)

Therefore I’m fairly certain something is not attributing correctly, whether it’s us the users (it seems there are many users as above having similar issues) who have not understood so something or whether Matomo tracking is not attributing as it should in some cases I’m not sure - any suggestions are welcome.

adsham · April 22, 2022, 2:38pm

Here is another example - this time of intra-website campaign links - overriding the first referrer (tile & carousel are mediums used to track links within the website)

Bubble · December 27, 2023, 4:17pm

Hey. Looks like the problem still persist. Does anyone have solution?

heurteph-ei · January 4, 2024, 12:39pm

Hi @Bubble
This should have been fixed by:

github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Understand why conversions are sometimes attributed to "Direct entry" or the payment provider, instead of the current channel

opened 03:58AM - 13 Jan 22 UTC

closed 11:48AM - 22 Aug 22 UTC

tsteur

Bug not-in-changelog c: Tracking

from https://forum.matomo.org/t/referral-exclusions/33582/25 The resolution s…uggested by Matomo in this article https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/how-do-i-add-a-referral-exclusion-in-matomo/ does not really address the underlying issue - it merely recategorizes the referrer from “website” to “direct entry”, which in reality isn’t the true referrer for the user’s visit. Here is an example of what is happening. 1. User clicks on an email link to visit the website. 2. User browses website and adds items to basket (at this stage referrer is “Email campaign”) 3. User completes the order but and website redirects to 3rd party payment provider (paypal/amazon etc) 4. User returns to website (but now the referrer for the visit is reset from “Email campaign” to “website” or if you have set the referrer exclusions it will be set to “direct entry”. What we need is for it to remain as “Email Campaign”. As a result we are over attributing the channel “direct entry” greatly (40% vs 15% on GA). I'm not sure if we actually should call this feature "Referrer exclusion" as it's more like an "ignore refrerrer" or "keep the original referrer"? We wouldn't exclude this tracking request. We would still track that referrer but re-use the original referrer from the same visit. If it's from a different visit then we would use again a direct visit?

But one problem still remains:

github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Revisit: Updating referrer attribution of a visit when 2 channels are used within a same visit (current behavior is to override a "Direct" channel whenever possible)

opened 11:39AM - 22 Aug 22 UTC

sgiehl

Enhancement

This is a follow-up issue to the discussion in #18612 ### Summary When a v…isitor visits the page, the visit will be attributed to a certain referrer. This can currently be `website`, `campaign`, `search engine` or `social network`. If non of this referrer can be detected the visit will be attributed as `direct`. When a visitor afterwards revisits the page coming from another referrer and the referrer was previously attributed as `direct`, we currently may update the attribution to this new referrer. See workflow below: ### Current Attribution workflow ![Referrer Attribution](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1579355/169563862-c9cb78c0-a3f0-4ae8-a4ec-f4f0c64fc743.png) ### Conclusion Updating the referrer in that case might not be correct, as the visitor initially came directly to the page, but would then be attributed to another channel. As far as I know the code to update the referrer was initially added to fix some issue, where the referrer was not yet set with the first tracking request, but was sent with a later one. Not updating the referrer in that case, would then mean incorrectly attributing the visit as direct, instead of the correct referrer. A possible solution could be to only set/update the referrer until the very first page view tracking request of a visit. This would solve the issue, that other tracking requests might have already created a visit without a referrer, as it would then be updated with the page view request. Changing any behavior in referrer attribution might result in differently tracked data and thus changing numbers. As this might bring trouble, we should not change that outside of a major release. Also we should consider to do that using a config flag, that will only be activated for new installs automatically, so it won't harm any existing install by default.

jamesnozyz · January 8, 2024, 3:43pm

Did you work out a solution for excluding payment gateways so that attribution sticks with the campaign? Google Analytics allows you to do this and it’s pretty critical for using Matomo for e-commerce enabled sites.

heurteph-ei · January 9, 2024, 3:58pm

Hi @jamesnozyz
You can add a comment in the second GitHb ticket…