Omniture sends double metrics on Safari browser

Question

I use omniture analytics for tracking when is product is viewed when shopping on the site. These reports are send normally in FF, Chrome, IE browsers, but somehow when using Safari the reports are send twice.

Safari isn't making two calls, what is probably happening is that it is making one call and that call is responding with a redirect that is then making the second call. It could be that for some reason Omniture is logging the call as two entries, but that would be stupid.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Make sure you have Safari set to accept cookies, it will come by default blocking third party cookies.

If you are using a third party cookie and they are blocked, then you could see two calls on each page view. The first one will have a 302 status and the second one a 200 status. When SiteCatalyst loads, it checks for a cookie with a unique visitor ID in it. If the visitor has never been to the site before, or they have cleared their cookies, then the visitor ID cookie will not be found. In that case the call to SiteCatalyst gets redirected back, this time with a visitor ID value that was generated by the Omniture servers.

If the browser accepts cookies, then that vistor ID value is written to one (named s_vi), and referenced from there on each additional page view or other custom action that SiteCatalyst will record.

If that cookie could not be set, then its possible to see the multiple calls (one 302 and one 200) on each page view. But don't worry, when that happens you are not getting hit for multiple page views. Your analytics data will not be inflated because of this.