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Derek Hunziker
Derek Hunziker

Reputation: 13141

What is the purpose of the VisitorIdentification control?

My Sitecore starterkit website contains the following control in the head of each layout. Can someone explain what it's purpose is and whether or not it's needed? I could not find any information on it on the Sitecore SDN...

<sc:VisitorIdentification id="VisitorIdentification" runat="server" />

Control's output:

<link href="/layouts/System/VisitorIdentification.aspx" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Contents of stylesheet:

.sc_visitor {
}

Upvotes: 5

Views: 6482

Answers (2)

Yan Sklyarenko
Yan Sklyarenko

Reputation: 32270

See Analytics Configuration reference, paragraph 4.1.5 "The VisitorIdentification Web control".

Just in case the link about becomes obsolete:

The VisitorIdentification Web control helps the Sitecore analytics engine identify robots. The VisitorIdentification Web control generates an HTML <link> element that references an empty CSS resource. The Sitecore analytics engine uses this request to help differentiate robots from actual users.

For more information about automatic robot detection, see the section Automatic Robot Detection.

Important

To assist the analytics engine in robot identification, include the VisitorIdentification Web control in all of your layouts. For example: 

<sc:VisitorIdentification runat="server" />

Upvotes: 6

Jens Mikkelsen
Jens Mikkelsen

Reputation: 2712

It is used for OMS/DMS. You can kind of compare it to the Google Analytics script. If you don't use Sitecore DMS, you can delete it

Upvotes: 3

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