Products
Webtrends Analytics 9.x
Webtrends Analytics 8.x
Issue
Internet Explorer will not set a first party cookie when visiting a domain in the following format xxx.yy.
Cause
This issue is “as designed” by Microsoft for Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer is configured to not allow setting a cookie from a domain with three characters followed by a two character generic top level domain. (gTLD) An example would be xxx.yy where xxx is the domain name and yy is the top level domain. This is a built in security setting for IE so a cookie could not be set to a gTLD like com.us or org.uk because these are considered top level domains and setting a cookie to just a top level domain could be considered a security risk.
Resolution
As a workaround, set the fpcdom in the Webtrends tag to the following format:
this.fpcdom=”sub.xxx.yy”; (where “sub” is a sub-domain like “www”)
Please be aware that changing this will break cross domain tracking. Also, changing this before the largest reporting period has closed out may cause returning visitor data to be skewed in the reports.
Here is a knowledge base article from Microsoft describing the problem in detail.