I've been running Google Ad Manager on a client's website - https://www.thewire.co.uk since 2012 without issue until July 2020 when suddenly adverts stopped appearing on the home page, though they still appear on the rest of the site. I did a deep dive into the issue at the time and could find not clear problem or solution. It's not been an issue for most of the last year, but now we need to resolve it.
What's odd is that the adverts appear if I visit the same page via a different URL, eg, https://www.thewire.co.uk/?foo=bar (query string is ignored by server) or https://www.thewire.co.uk/home/ (this is serving the same page from a different uri)
All the adverts we serve are line items we load up to Ad Manager directly - we don't use adsense. We have some in house adverts running which are set to deliver when specific slots aren't loaded, so for instance there is a leaderboard at the top of every page which should always have an advert. MPUs on the right hand column are set to collapse if no advert is picked.
When I check delivery using Ad Manager debug tool I am informed adverts are delivering correctly, and the adverts show. But in normal viewing it is not.
This is happening consistently across browsers, devices and with/without ad blockers installed, and on 'vanilla' systems running on new ISP networks across several countries, which I believe counters out any limits that may be created by cookies and IP addresses or location.
I've scoured the Google Ad Manager settings in case some form of serving block was in place, but I've found nothing, and no notifications of any limitations on our home page URL, so I'm completely stumped as to why.
I've checked the google tags and embed codes on our site and they are all OK - they are pulled from a template which is used consistently across the site, and they obviously work when I look at the same HTML via a different context, which leads me to believe the issue is some blocking in place for the specific https://www.thewire.co.uk url from Google's side.
Has anyone had any similar issue and have advise on how to resolve or able to point me to somewhere in google I can get specific support for this issue? Searches through help and the support forums have turned up nothing.
There are numerous work arounds I could apply (eg an http 301 or 302 redirect / to /home/ ) but I really want to solve the problem, not work round it only for it to arise again.
There's a previous topic on StackOverflow - Google Ads not showing on my home page - but that shows no resolution. So posting this maybe the same issue in case my necromancy on that doesn't work. The solutions linked in the comments on that post are either outdated or don't work.
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I have a website with published posts, like a blog, and each post page have a Facebook like button, provided by their official documentation page. When testing, on my local environment and on my test server it works fine, but in production the buttons don't show up. In some computers they popup, but in most cases it doesn't. The iframe is generated, but blank. I'll list what I already tried:
Disabled adblock
Cleaned cache
Tried on another browsers
Tried a different DNS server (the DNS that worked on one machine didn't work on another)
Looked for errors or any hint on chrome developer console, even inside the requests made to facebook
Checked the allow-origin configs on the apache server and tried different setups
Tried both method of embedding, through iframe and script
I made a portfolio website using a Jekyll template in Github Pages. 16 hours or so ago, I connected the Github pages site to a personal domain I purchased. I did so by creating a CNAME folder in the Pages repository and adding this CNAME as well as a few A variables to the DNS records with my domain provider (Domain.com) An hour or so after making these DNS changes, Github pages said my site was published on the new domain.
I shared the link to my new website with a few people. Several of them were able to access it without any issue; however, some reported that they received an empty white page when arriving to the site or a generic page with messaging along the lines of 'this domain hasn't been set up.' The failure to see the site seems to have no pattern across browser or device.
For me personally, I was able to see the site last night but this morning after deploying some new changes, I couldn't see the site for 30 minutes or so, until it suddenly worked again. During the time I couldn't see it, other friends reported that they were able to view it.
Any idea why this might be happening? I'm brand new to this stuff and I can't figure it out.
You could use dnsmap.io and check if the CNAME propagation is complete or still in progress.
You can see more at "Why are my CNAME Records not propagating?": that would explain the empty white page.
That being said, this could also be affected by an GitHub incident currently pending.
Assume I have Sitecore website A and an external site B. They use totally different top domains. And both use http protocols.
I added FXM from Site A onto Site B.
Setup a goal C to be triggered when user visits Site B.
In Site A, setup if goal C is triggered, display D on the Site A homepage.
My question is that, if user visits Site A and Site B in one browser. Should user see D when he/she refreshes Site A after visiting Site B?
I tested this: D doesn't display. But I am not sure if it's Sitecore doesn't support it or I set it up wrong.
Basically it comes down to if Sitecore can track the same visitor under different domains.(see below)
Couldn't find relevant information in Sitecore documentations, it mostly talk about only on external sites.
Thanks in advance!
-----------------Some Updates-------------------
I found that the cookie "sc_ext_contact" under Site B domain and "SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE" under Site A domain have the same value. So Sitecore can identify the same visitor, it's the goal that is triggered on external site is not being used on Site A?
I also tested that, if goal C is used to define a customization for E to be displayed on Site B. When Site B is visited, E is displayed on Site B.
With the help from Sitecore Support and a bit digging. I've got the following answers:
No, they are not shared by default.
However you can force Sitecore to share the sessions by setting "FXM.ShareSessionsWhenPossible" to true. It's in Sitecore.FXM.config file.
But it comes with a warning:
<!-- FXM SHARE SESSIONS WHEN POSSIBLE
This provides the option to record visits across multiple sites made in the same browser session, to be
recorded in the same analytics interaction. This behavior is limited by the same restrictions as tracking
contacts across sites, so on Safari and IE 8 & 9 page visits cannot be recorded in the same interaction.
The analytics data model does not officially support visits to multiple sites within the same interaction,
so turning this setting on is not recommended.
-->
The restriction is referring to this URL: https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/digital_marketing/federated_experience_manager/diagrams/browser_and_session_compatibility_in_fxm
Sitecore elaborated that warning a bit more: every interaction has a property SiteName, it can't take multiple values. So when this is enabled and visit is multi site, it will only be recorded as one site. Therefore analytics reports may be inaccurate.
I am not sure if it affects any other things as well. But for interactions, this is very true. Basically the site will be set to the first site that's visited during the session.
When it's Sitecore Site, it's set in
Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.CreateVisits.InitializeWithRequestData
When it's FXM, it's set in
Sitecore.FXM.Pipelines.Tracking.TrackPageVisit.InitializeContextSiteProcessor
Goals from different sites are recorded under one interaction too, but the goal conversion table still display them with the correct site name, so I guess these site data come from other sources, maybe during aggregation process.
Therefore, technically it's not supported by default, but it can be by changing settings, but with risks of inaccurate analytics reports.
We have been working on a gaming website. Recently while making note of the major traffic sources I noticed a website that I found to be a carbon-copy of our website. It uses our logo,everything same as ours but a different domain name. It cannot be, that domain name is pointing to our domain name. This is because at several places links are like ccwebsite/our-links. That website even has links to some images as ccwebsite/our-images.
What has happened ? How could have they done that ? What can I do to stop this ?
There are a number of things they might have done to copy your site, including but not limited to:
Using a tool to scrape a complete copy of your site and place it on their server
Use their DNS name to point to your site
Manually re-create your site as their own
Respond to requests to their site by scraping yours real-time and returning that as the response
etc.
What can I do to stop this?
Not a whole lot. You can try to prevent direct linking to your content by requiring referrer headers for your images and other resources so that requests need to come from pages you serve, but 1) those can be faked and 2) not all browsers will send those so you'd break a small percentage of legitimate users. This also won't stop anybody from copying content, just from "deep linking" to it.
Ultimately, by having a website you are exposing that information to the internet. On a technical level anybody can get that information. If some information should be private you can secure that information behind a login or other authorization measures. But if the information is publicly available then anybody can copy it.
"Stopping this" is more of a legal/jurisdictional/interpersonal concern than a technical one I'm afraid. And Stack Overflow isn't in a position to offer that sort of advice.
You could run your site with some lightweight authentication. Just issue a cookie passively when they pull a page, and require the cookie to get access to resources. If a user visits your site and then the parallel site, they'll still be able to get in, but if a user only knows about the parallel site and has never visited the real site, they will just see a crap ton of broken links and images. This could be enough to discourage your doppelganger from keeping his site up.
Another (similar but more complex) option is to implement a CSRF mitigation. Even though this isn't a CSRF situation, the same mitigation will work. Essentially you'd issue a cookie as described above, but in addition insert the cookie value in the URLs for everything and require them to match. This requires a bit more work (you'll need a filter or module inserted into the pipeline) but will keep out everybody except your own users.
I am trying to reference my .asmx webservices in .NET but my server is not exposed to the internet. When I put on the following address I get the message mentioned below. What's the reason for not being able to see the directory? Am I missing something in my IIS configuraction? Am I missing anything in my permissions? Just as reference I have other folders with webservices and I have the same issue.
When I login to the server I am doing it with my windows user and password (I am using windows authentication). It's necessary to mention that when I put the URL I am getting a popup screen to put in my userid and password but it seems that's not able to validate since keeps asking me a couple of times. Let me know if you need more information to address this issue .
http://appsvr02/Inetpub/wwwroot/DevWebApi/
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
What you can try:
It appears you are connected to the Internet, but you might want to try to reconnect to the Internet.
Retype the address.
Go back to the previous page.
Most likely causes:
•You are not connected to the Internet.
•The website is encountering problems.
•There might be a typing error in the address.
More information
This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including:
•Internet connectivity has been lost.
•The website is temporarily unavailable.
•The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable.
•The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain.
•If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section.
For offline users
You can still view subscribed feeds and some recently viewed webpages.
To view subscribed feeds
1.Click the Favorites Center button , click Feeds, and then click the feed you want to view.
To view recently visited webpages (might not work on all pages)
1.Click Tools , and then click Work Offline.
2.Click the Favorites Center button , click History, and then click the page you want to view.
Try http://appsvr02/DevWebApi.
You shouldn't need to specify the full path, as IIS serves from wwwroot by default.
I don't know what I did but I was able to see it this time. thank youa all for your input. This is how the path to my server shows now. http://appsvr02/DevWeApi/Owner.asmx