1718882 - The frequently 10 visited URLs drop down list, keep replacing the lower URLs with inner site URLs.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Toolkit :: Places, defect, P2)

Description

[Wesley]

Attachment: Screen_shots.zip

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

I log in to my Outlook/Hotmail account.

Actual results:

Just by login in to my Outlook/Hotmail account and opening the emails form inbox and after the ones in the junk mail, the drop down list will eventually replace one or more URLs from my most visit sites URL, with my outlook junk mail URL or any other URL that I remain too long from within a Website.
As I keep viewing sub-pages from a site that I frequently visit, more and more sub-pages get listed within the 10 most visited and discarding the other Websites.
Please see images attached.

Expected results:

Firefox should not list inner pages from any site as a frequent visit page.
It is very annoying to have 1 to 6 inner pages listed as most visited.
Firefox should only list the landing page of a site that we visit frequently and disregard any sub-page from that Website.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Cloud Services::Server: Firefox Accounts' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Andrei Purice]

Hey Wesley,
I tried reproducing this on the latest versions of Firefox Nightly 91.0a1 (2021-07-06), beta 90.0 and release 89.0.2 but it works accordingly for me.

Can you test the issue while in Safe Mode? You can find helpful info here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode .
Also a fresh new profile could help. You can find more about creating a new profile here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile .
If possible, you can test this issue on the nightly build as well. Download the build from : https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/nightly/all/ .

Comment 3

[Wesley]

(In reply to Andrei Purice from comment #2)

Hey Wesley,
I tried reproducing this on the latest versions of Firefox Nightly 91.0a1 (2021-07-06), beta 90.0 and release 89.0.2 but it works accordingly for me.

Can you test the issue while in Safe Mode? You can find helpful info here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode .
Also a fresh new profile could help. You can find more about creating a new profile here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile .
If possible, you can test this issue on the nightly build as well. Download the build from : https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/nightly/all/ .

Hi Andrei.

This problem happens over time, it takes about one week on my end to start to change the list.
I am now trying to reproduce it my self avoiding click most of the 10 and only clicking on 2 or 3 sites of the drop down list.
Once it changes again, I will send you some images.
I Usually open outlook 2 or 3 times a day and most of the other site I open about0nce a day.
I also notice that the time I spent on certain inner pages will affect the result as well.
I will try your suggestion and test it on safe mode as well.
I think the problem is on the algorithm that calculate the rank of the most visit URLs. It's calculation does not disregard sub-pages from a website.

Thank you,

Wesley

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

(In reply to Wesley from comment #3)

I think the problem is on the algorithm that calculate the rank of the most visit URLs. It's calculation does not disregard sub-pages from a website.

I agree this sounds like the problem, but IIRC we do ignore sub-frames, so there may be a bug here or it may just be that Outlook/Hotmail is some kind of pathological case. We'll need to investigate how exactly the site is designed.

Marco, you moved this from Places to Address Bar, but AFAICT this is related to frecency boosting, so I'll move this back to Places. Please move it back if I'm misunderstanding.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Drew Willcoxon :adw from comment #4)

(In reply to Wesley from comment #3)
I agree this sounds like the problem, but IIRC we do ignore sub-frames, so there may be a bug here or it may just be that Outlook/Hotmail is some kind of pathological case. We'll need to investigate how exactly the site is designed.

The relevant code is here:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/4f05a46731c1f7f111ec7a41ce38a34594aa0d37/toolkit/components/places/History.cpp#1828-1846
it's possible outlook is somehow picking the wrong path.
I must also note these visits are not ignored, they just don't take any bonus, but they are accounted for.
We would really need to check how visits are registered.

Marco, you moved this from Places to Address Bar, but AFAICT this is related to frecency boosting, so I'll move this back to Places. Please move it back if I'm misunderstanding.

Yes, it's related to frecency, I moved it to the Address Bar just because its effect is clearly visible there. With the movement of UC to the urlbar component the boundary has become really thin, frecency is pretty much an address bar thing.
I'm almost tempted to remove the Places component and move everything either to the Address Bar or to Bookmarks & History (or the relevant component using the feature)... Anyway, I think it works either way.

Comment 6

[Wesley]

Attachment: Screen shot 03.jpg

Comment 7

[Wesley]

Hi Andrei, hi Marco, hi Drew.

This problem is not only with Hotmail/Outlook.
Also is happening with other sites that I constant visit.
Check the Royal Bank for example; when I got to their site, once I log in it goes to a verification page.
The verification URL also is showing on the list. See image "Scree Shot 03" that I just attached.
Some how the algorithm is also listing sub-pages from a main Website.
I will try to reproduce this with other sites, just keep in mind that it takes time to this to happens.

Thank you.

Wesley

Comment 8

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Changing severity to S3 because this is a frecency miscalculation bug that may affect many users, but requires specific investigation.

Comment 9

[Chris Bellini (:cbellini)]

While it may be challenging to account for many potential use cases, there is an update to the frecency algorithm in the development channel that may help improve this scenario and mitigate the likelihood of results like these from appearing. We'll evaluate that as we rollout the changed algorithm.