Closed Bug 1604487 Opened 4 years ago Closed 4 years ago

DuckDuckGo non organic search probes inconsistencies

Categories

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: ccomorasu, Unassigned)

Details

Note

  • For this scenario please use a Canada proxy/CA region.

Affected versions

  • Fx 71.0
  • Fx 72.0b7
  • Fx 73.0a1

Affected platforms

  • Windows 10 x64
  • macOS 10.14.6
  • Ubuntu 18.04

Steps to reproduce

  1. Launch Firefox.
  2. Go to https://duckduckgo.com/.
  3. Search for a term from the website search bar.
  4. Go to about:telemetry, select Raw JSON, then select Raw Data.
  5. Search for "SEARCH_COUNTS".

Expected result

  • Under the "SEARCH_COUNTS" bucket the following string is displayed:
  • "duckduckgo.in-content:organic:hz"

Actual result

  • Under the "SEARCH_COUNTS" bucket the following string is displayed:
  • "duckduckgo.in-content:organic:h_" (Windows/Ubuntu)
  • "duckduckgo.in-content:organic:hk" (macOS)

Regression range
Unsure if this is a regression, I will return with details ASAP.

Has Regression Range: --- → no
Has STR: --- → yes

Where did you get hz from? The organic search telemetry is generated from the parameters that search providers put on their own URLs. I just tried this with en-GB in GB, and I see https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test&t=h_&ia=web as the url. The code is taken from the t parameter, so it reports h_ to telemetry as expected.

If it was hz before and it is now h_ / hk, then it looks like DDG has changed their codes.

We can't do anything about this, we're just reporting what we're seeing.

Flags: needinfo?(cristian.comorasu)

I received hz by searching on https://duckduckgo.com/, en-US region on Windows 10 x64.
We are investigating this issue in the pre-release testing session. I will return once we have more details.

Flags: needinfo?(cristian.comorasu)

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:standard8, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(standard8)

Hi Cristian, did you get any more details here? As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue. We're just reporting the code that DDG is using in their own redirect. We're not controlling those.

Flags: needinfo?(standard8) → needinfo?(cristian.comorasu)

Hey Mark and Cristian! Konrad from DDG here. We add t=h_ for searches from the homepage, and t=ha, t=hb, etc for different variations of the homepage. Hope that helps. In the future we plan to document that a bit better here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/t/ .

Thanks Konrad!
So, basically, we shouldn't be picky and expect that whatever is after "t= " to be in the telemetry aswell. Seems like this is a WFM then

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(cristian.comorasu)
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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