CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analyticsgoogle-tag-manager
piercestanley
piercestanley

Reputation: 1

GTM Scroll Depth Tracker throws Client ID error creating new sessions in GA reports

I have GTM's out-of-the-box scroll depth tracker deployed across my site. When looking at Google Tag Assistant, I'm noticing a new session is created every time a user scrolls beyond a scroll threshhold when scroll tracker is enabled (e.g 25, 50, 75, 100%) and scrolling events fire at each threshhold. The error throws a Client ID reset. This results in a new Client ID each time the event fires at each threshhold. In reports, this means potentially five additional new users and/or sessions per pageview and could affect bounce rate and average time on page stats, with a huge inflation of new sessions across the site from this error.

Disabled scroll tracking and the Client ID error stops. What causes new sessions to be generated from scroll depth event firing?

GA error message: "This hit starts a new session, most likely because the client ID changed. This is caused by an improper tracking code implementation."

Upvotes: 0

Views: 192

Answers (1)

Michele Pisani
Michele Pisani

Reputation: 14189

I looked at the website, and I noticed that, for some strange reason, the first time I land on your website (with the cookiebar present) the Google Analytics cookie _ga has no content and its deadline also means that being 2 years old is set to yesterday.

A very strange behavior but that would explain the problem. In fact it seems that there is something on the website that deletes that cookie once created so Analytics, not finding it, creates a new one at each event or pageview, for this reason it generates a user every hit it sends in this situation.

if you close the cookiebar and refresh the page, the _ga cookie works correctly.

I have never seen anything like this, it would be interesting to understand what this behavior actually happens, however you would solve it in less time by changing the cookiebar on the website.

Upvotes: 0

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