The “Suspected cache” indicator in your Elevate Business Dashboard means that some website data may be reused across visitors, which leads to incorrect tracking, and prevents features such as personalization and exposure strategies from working. This overview will help you understand what “suspected cache” means, the impact and next steps.
What does suspected cache mean?
A “Suspected cache” percentage in your dashboard indicates that Elevate has detected activity suggesting that cached content on your website is being reused across user sessions. In technical terms, a ticket (which identifies a query result) is used with a different session key than the one it was originally generated for.
Example
A straightforward example of how this can occur is when caching Elevate responses on category pages.
- Visitor A, in Session A, lands on Category page X
- The first time the page loads, the result including the tickets from the Elevate response are cached by the retailer.
- Visitor B, in Session B, enters the site and loads Category page X
- When visitor B now clicks on a product on Category page X, a suspected cache event is triggered due to the mismatch between the session the product ticket was generated for and where it was used.
Note that broken session key handling could also trigger this behavior, e.g. if Visitor A switches session key right after a query is performed and then clicks on a product right after using another session key.
In short: Elevate responses should not be cached. This example was of category pages, and the same can occur on search pages, product pages etc.
Impact of caching
When the cache isn't working as intended, it mainly affects reporting and conversion tracking. If cached responses are served to multiple visitors, Elevate can’t reliably link behavior or conversions to the correct session. The conversion may still be counted, but marked as “suspected cache” since attribution is uncertain.
Suspected cache can also affect the accuracy of personalization and A/B testing results, including boost, bury, and pinning statistics.
How to investigate and fix a suspected cache indication
The root problem of the “suspected caching” indication is that caching of the Elevate response is likely occurring on your site. If you notice a “Suspected cache” percentage of more than 5%, contact your technical or integration team to remove caching of Elevate responses. Refer to the technical documentation for guidelines on caching.
Developer details: Query Integration – Caching
If you or your integration team are unsure about how to proceed, reach out to your Voyado contact for assistance validating your integration setup.
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