When you search for the Person record of a particular email address using the Visitors report search you might see:
Sorry, we could not find any shoppers matching your query.
Person Not Found.
Oops! Sorry, this person could not be found, this person may have been deleted.
These messages can appear for several reasons.
1. We didn't capture the email address on-site
We weren’t able to record the visitor’s email address, either through an email input or Campaign Based Identification.
If you entered your email address in an input field on-site, you can use the Site Info Bar or contact Support to confirm that it's being tracked. If you didn’t enter it, try entering an email address on-site, and then after we've processed it, your Person record should show in the Visitors report.
2. Event Filters excluded the session
Your activity may have been excluded by Event filters.
To check this:
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Website Settings > Activity Block (Test/Office Data).
Check whether the URL or IP address you were using is included in the filters.
If your URL or IP address appears there, the system filtered out your activity.
To bypass Event filters:
Expand the User menu.
Select Open site info bar.
Events recorded using the Site Info Bar ignore Event filters.
3. Person record was deleted after merging
When two records are merged, the system performs a check to see if the combined Person record fits any of the following criteria for deletion, based on the default thresholds:
If a serialized Person record exceeds 1 million characters
If a Person record has more than 10 device IDs
If a Person record has more than 10 email addresses associated with it - legacy person merge behaviour only.
If any of these conditions are met, then that Person record is deleted. These limits are usually only hit by testing records, shared devices, or bots.
These thresholds are the defaults and can be configured by the Support team. If you feel that these thresholds are too low for your customer base, contact Support and request they raise them for you.
When person records are merged
Person records merge in these situations:
Email address entered on multiple devices
When the same email address is captured on different devices or after clearing cookies, person records are merged to consolidate interaction history and prevent multiple emails.
Email addresses entered on the same device
If multiple email addresses are entered on one device, they are added to the record linked to that cookie. This can cause issues when separate visitors use the same device. To prevent this during testing, use an incognito window or apply Activity Blocks for customer service teams entering customer details.
Clicking a link in an email containing another person's external ID
If an email containing campaign-based ID functionality is forwarded or shared without removing the ID, the original email address is associated with the friend's visit, causing record merging.
Cached pages exposing a visitor's email address to multiple people
If logged-in customers' email addresses are exposed in the page code, and pages are cached, the same email address may be exposed for multiple people, resulting in incorrect record merging. This data protection issue should be resolved by your development team.
To manage person record merging effectively, consider using incognito windows during testing, applying Activity Blocks, and addressing potential data protection issues.
When the email address is seen on-site again, it creates a fresh Person record for that address. The record includes a trace indicating that a previous Person record for that email address was deleted.