Why is there a difference in the number of searches and visits logged in the legacy and new Summon usage systems?

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Product: Summon

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There could be a variety of factors at play that would result in a difference between the numbers in Urchin (legacy usage statistics) and Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI) (new system) reports. These could include but are not limited to the following:

Tag location - Where the tags are set on the page can change the total numbers registered by the tracking system. In other words, if the tag loads first in the order of items loaded on the page, then you’ll have a higher count. Load it last and there’s the possibility the tag will never load (person navigates away from the page or some other error prevents it from loading).
Definition of a search - What constitutes a search may vary from system to system. For example, in Urchin any search, whether executed by facets or by entering something in the search box would be counted as a search. So multiple facets applied could count for multiple searches. Depending on how Google Analytics is loaded in the page, it might not count all facet searches as searches. We’re seeing that at least an equal amount of searches if not more are generated by facets as by terms in the search box. So if the GA tags aren’t picking up facet searches that would account for the number being reduced by half.
System issues - Accuracy of the data itself may be a problem. For OBI and GA, this is less of a concern. For Urchin, because it has been out of support for years, there could be a bug that’s affecting their numbers. We have seen specific Summon instances where no searches or data was showing up for Urchin or where it was recorded as much higher. Unfortunately there’s no good way to troubleshoot this, because bugs within Urchin are not addressed by Google.

No system will capture 100 percent of searches, because there’s always the possibility that something on the user’s end prevents the search from being logged. OBI should be the closest to actual numbers. This is due to two different factors: hosting of the tracking system in the same network and OBI gathers reporting data asynchronously from page loads (basically, we track the event regardless of whether the page fully loads).

Article last edited: 01-June-2017