The eBay and Etsy Sponsored Top Sites create history tiles for every click
Categories
(Firefox :: Top Sites, defect)
Tracking
()
People
(Reporter: mheres, Unassigned)
References
(Blocks 1 open bug)
Details
(Keywords: blocked-ux, Whiteboard: [fidefe-quality-foundation])
Attachments
(1 file, 1 obsolete file)
7.25 MB,
image/gif
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Details |
[Notes]:
- After the fix to Bug 1699703, the Amazon sponsored top site has a different behavior: when dismissed, a single history tile pointing to the homepage is displayed (if the default Amazon tile is of the URL type).
- On Fx versions 89 and 88 the Amazon sponsored top site has the same behavior as described in this bug.
[Affected Versions]:
- Firefox Nightly 90.0a1 (Build ID: 20210513093303)
- Firefox Beta 89.0b12 (Build ID: 20210513185752)
- Firefox Release 88.0.1 (Build ID: 20210504152106)
[Affected Platforms]:
- Windows 10
- macOS 11.1
- Linux Mint 20
[Prerequisites]:
- Have Firefox open.
- From the “about:config” page, have the following preferences set:
browser.topsites.useRemoteSetting
set totrue
browser.partnerlink.useAttributionURL
set totrue
browser.topsites.experiment.ebay-2020-1
set totrue
browser.search.region
set to a region that displays Sponsored top sites (e.g.US
/’CA’).
[Steps to reproduce]:
- Navigate to “about:newtab”.
- Click the eBay Sponsored Top Site.
- Change the system settings to a different date or time in the near future.
- Restart the browser.
- Click the eBay Sponsored Top Site.
- Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 a few times.
- Dismiss the eBay Sponsored tile and any that take its place.
[Expected result]:
- After dismissing a Sponsored Top Site, a single history tile pointing to the homepage takes its place.
[Actual result]:
- Dismissing eBay (or Etsy in CA) creates a history tile for every URL in history created by clicking on the Sponsored top site.
[Additional Notes]:
- Attached is a recording of the issue (es-MX locale, US region).
Reporter | ||
Comment 1•4 years ago
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Jim, Natalie, could you please take a look at this issue to make sure the expected behavior stated is correct?
The expected result should be:
- After dismissing a Sponsored Shortcut / Top Site, the sponsored label and tile are both removed. Other tiles shift to the left to replace them.
Updated•4 years ago
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Updated•4 years ago
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Comment 3•3 years ago
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Comment 4•3 years ago
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This patch just deletes the item from history when dismissing it, which seems to be what comment 2 is suggesting.
I don't know how to test this.
Comment 5•3 years ago
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I was only able to reproduce the following:
- If you visit one of the sponsored sites several times, then dismiss the tile, a non-sponsored replacement for the same site appears in its place. I beleive this patch fixes this issue and deletes the tile without replacing it .
- I had a sponsored tile for hotels.com. Clicking it multiple times would add two history entries (verified in the history sidebar), one with the equals sign in the url escaped and one without. I couldn't reproduce the issue with ebay or amazon tiles, but I wonder if it is similar problem where a different link is being generated in history every time it is clicked.
Maria, does there appear multiple ebay items in history after step 6 and what are their urls?
Also, is it possible to test with this patch to see if the issue goes away?
Reporter | ||
Comment 6•3 years ago
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I was able to reproduce this issue again for eBay on Firefox Nightly 99.0a1 (Build ID: 20220218090822) en-US with a VPN set to the GB region (on Windows). I clicked the eBay tile 8 total times (with different times each time set across 2 days - with the date changed artificially - and with a Firefox restart before each new click). I noted down what the time and date I had set and what URL was displayed in the address bar after clicking the Sponsored tile here.
The history entries displayed in history were:
21 Feb:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645438826400100012&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645439403401100011&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645437158400100010&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
22 Feb:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645438826400100012&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645439403401100011&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
The tiles created had these URLs when hovered:
1st tile
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645438826400100012&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
2nd tile
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645439403401100011&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
3rd tile
https://www.ebay.co.uk/?mkevt=1&mkcid=2&mkrid=7101608169642080&keyword=conducive&crlp=1645437158400100010&MT_ID=562786&device=Computers&cmpgn=216901
I believe a fix could be verified.
Reporter | ||
Updated•3 years ago
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Reporter | ||
Comment 7•3 years ago
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If the changes need testing without being pushed to Nightly, I think I would need to be provided a link to a try build to be able to do that.
Comment 8•3 years ago
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Reading the history entries in comment #6, I looked at https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/services/settings/dumps/main/top-sites.json#4 , and it appears some of the Amazon, eBay and Etsy links (but not all of them!) have %YYYYMMDDHH%
replacement patterns in them. So I imagine that for some history tiles, we create only 1 history entry if it's clicked many times (because the URL is the same for each click) and for others, we create many (because the URL is different every day/hour it is clicked). Neil, I imagine this gives you confidence in your patch (or not!) ? :-)
Comment 9•3 years ago
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Yes, the links above have slightly different numbers, so they would create different history entries.
Updated•3 years ago
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Comment 10•3 years ago
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For extra contexts:
- :Gijs is right that for almost all the sponsored tiles (except Yandex ones), there is a
%YYYYMMDDHH%
template in their landing URL. Firefox will populate it with the actual date&time whenever a sponsored tile is displayed. As a result, when one clicks on it, Firefox will create a new history record with the processed URL. - The vast majority of sponsored tiles are now published through Contile. There are also a few of them hosted on Remote Settings (such as the Yandex tiles).
- Unlike organic tiles, we only allow Firefox users to dismiss sponsored tiles, "Delete from History" is hidden from the context menu for sponsored tiles. The dismissal works at the advertiser level, i.e. once a sponsored tile for advertiser A was dismissed, Firefox will not show any more sponsored tiles for that advertiser.
- Note that our tiles partner (adMarketplace) is constantly rotating tiles on their side, it's possible that a sponsored A was shown and clicked by the user. Later, our partner paused this tile. The URL was recognized as an organic top site by Firefox and shown again in the TopSites. This could happen on a new profile. In this case, "Delete from History" will be shown on the context menu so that the user can delete this URL from the history.
In summary, I think that clicking on the same sponsored tiles at different times will create multiple history records is expected, although it could be annoying. We could strip off some or all those query parameters in the URL before creating the history record, but I am not sure if it's a good idea to do that.
Comment 11•3 years ago
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Given the comments on the patch, can you describe what you think should be done here?
Comment 12•3 years ago
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Given the comments on the patch, can you describe what you think should be done here?
I think we should reach out to the product manager of newtab page to get their input on this.
FWIW, the current dismissal logic of TopSites works at the URL level. As a result, if there are multiple URLs (only the query params differ from each other) for the same domain, (e.g. Slack, Gdoc, Amazon, eBay, etc.), the user needs to dismiss all of them one by one. So this would happen regardless of the type of tiles (sponsored or non-sponsored). If product believes we should dismiss at the site level, then we'd have to change how the dismissal works, which I believe that work would be a non-trivial change.
Comment 13•3 years ago
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Hi! Hope it's alright if I jump in here.
Jim, can we please ask for your input on the issue.
I concur with Nan's assessment that:
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It makes sense that only dismissal is available to users for the Top Sites tiles. If there's a strong reason a user would like to get rid from a sponsored tile from their history, they are still able to do it by clearing the history. I also do not see a problem with extra history record created for every click on the sponsored tile, and consider that expected.
-
It makes sense to have dismissal for sponsored tiles work the same (at the URL level) for organic ones, with a caveat that:
- with organic top sites tiles, users have few opportunities to create essentially duplicate tiles that differ only by a handful of query parameters but point to the exact same page.
- we want users to use sponsored tiles and add as little friction as possible. Having duplicate tiles created by clicks on the sponsored tile feels like friction to me.
Could we perhaps avoid creating a duplicate tile if the only difference between the already existing tile link and a new one is the %YYYYMMDDHH% part of the URL paramaters?
I wonder if we can quantify the problem (and decide whether it's worth investing in a bespoke approach to sponsored tiles) by checking:
- how common is the dismiss sponsored tile action, e.g. what percentage of displayed sponsored tiles get dismissed?
- if we can dive even deeper, how many dismissals happen to the same base URL?
Comment 14•3 years ago
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I mentioned in the related JIRA issue, but I believe this has been resolved by other work done by the search team.
https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/FIDEFE-2272
Comment 15•3 years ago
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Fantastic, thank you for the update, I'm going to close this and JIRA tickets.
Updated•3 years ago
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Comment 16•2 years ago
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The Sponsored Tiles mechanism was changed since this bug was logged and now are delivered through Contile.
However, the issue that also fixed this behavior was tested and covered in QA-1488 and in Bug 1768529. Considering this I will mark this bug as Verified Fixed.
Description
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