1875287 - The target": "non_ads_link" is registered in the serp glean telemetry after clicking the Shopping tab from Google

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P2)

Description

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: shopping tab ping.mp4

[Notes]:

• We haven't managed to reproduce this issue with Bing. The "target": "shopping_tab", is correctly registered in the "engagement" ping after clicking the Shopping tab from Google.

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Release 121.0.1 (Build ID: 20240108143603)
• Firefox Beta 122.0b8 (Build ID: 20240110091443)
• Firefox Nightly 123.0a1 (Build ID:20240117145030)

[Affected Platforms]:

• macOS 13.1
• Windows 10 x64
• Ubuntu 20.04

[Prerequisites]:

• Have Google set as default search engine.
• Have a Firefox profile with the following prefs in the "about:config" page:
• browser.search.serpEventTelemetry.enabled set to true

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser from the prerequisites.
2. Navigate to "about:glean" and create a debug tag.
3. Open a new tab and search in urlbar for "shopping shoes".
4. Click on the "Shopping" tab from the Google page.
5. Go to “https://debug-ping-preview.firebaseapp.com/” and select the previous debug tag.
6. Click on the last event sent.
7. Observe the "engagement" ping.

[Expected result]:

• The target": "shopping_tab" is correctly registered.

[Actual result]:

• The target": "non_ads_link" is registered instead of the target": "shopping_tab".

[Additional Notes]:

• Attached is a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[James Teow [:jteow]]

We temporarily store URLs as they appear on page like:

https://www.foo.com/search?q=bar&page=shopping

When the user clicks the URL, it's possible for the URL to change and for the pertinent data to be inserted into the redirect URL as a percent escaped string, e.g:
https://www.foo.com/baz?redirect_url=%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dbar%26page%3Dshopping

So we may need to provide a query parameter to examine in cases when we know redirects or URL manipulation will happen.

Comment 2

[James Teow [:jteow]]

Attachment: Bug 1875287 - Extract urls from query param values in links when required - r?scunnane!

Comment 3

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f0096eec6820
Extract urls from query param values in links when required - r=scunnane

Comment 4

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f0096eec6820

Comment 5

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

Since nightly and release are affected, beta will likely be affected too.
For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 6

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

The patch landed in nightly and beta is affected.
:jteow, is this bug important enough to require an uplift?

• If yes, please nominate the patch for beta approval.
• If no, please set status-firefox124 to wontfix.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 7

[James Teow [:jteow]]

The patch adds functionality to Desktop that should fix this issue, but I still need to update search-telemetry-v2 which I'll do in Bug 1884923 and request QA to verify the fix.

Comment 8

[Cristian Baica [:cbaica], Release Desktop QA]

Hey James,
Issue has been tested(on Win 10, Ubuntu and macOS using the latest Nightly build), using RS - Staging as advised. Clicking on a shopping tab now is correctly recorded as such. We can move on with the push to production.
One note that I'd like to make here is that the source of the ping is listed as 'unknow', but that happens without the Staging environment as well, so it might not be related, but worth looking into.