Wp-calypso: Stats: Referrers: Change how we Label Android Referrers

Created on 14 Aug 2019  ·  6Comments  ·  Source: Automattic/wp-calypso

In Stats, we currently group views from _any_ Android app under "Wordpress Android App". However, most of these views are _not_ from the WordPress Android app, and are in fact from other Android apps such as Gmail or Twitter apps.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Send yourself an email with a link to one of your blogs.
  2. Check your email in the Gmail app on an Android device.
  3. Click that link, it should take you to your blog in Gmail's in-app browser.
  4. Head to Stats in Calypso, and note that you have a view from the referrer “Wordpress Android App” with the link http://android-app//com.google.android.gm

What I expected

Checking my email should result in a referrer like "Gmail" or "Email".

What happened instead

The referrer is "Wordpress Android App”, which leads me to believe the site was viewed directly from the WordPress Android App. This is not the case.

screen_shot_on_2019-08-14_at_10_35_41_720

There are a number of other stats which come from Android devices, but are labeled as "Wordpress Android App", incorrectly. This can cause confusion about where these stats come from.
This is a poor stats grouping, and should be labeled differently.

Grouping was created in: r178394-wpcom
case 'android-app' : return 'WordPress Android App';

Browser / OS version

Chrome 75.0.3770.142 on MacOS 10.14.5
-and-
Gmail App on Nokia 2, Android 7.1.1

Context / Source

A user came wondering about the meaning of stats coming from "Wordpress Android App".
#user-report

Stats [Type] Bug

All 6 comments

I ran into this again with another user of the WordPress app, confused about why so many views were coming from "WordPress Android App".

Here's another example, from another conversation with a confused user. This one thought they'd been hacked and someone else was using the WordPress app to edit their site, which is not the case.
None of these referrers are WordPress.
WordPress Android App

Ran into this again today with a user who thought these were spam, since the links lead nowhere.

Seems like a core WP issue and not wp-calypso specific. I recorded an odd count of visitors (> 1,000) referred by "Wordpress Android App" which in fact were triggered from other Android (API Level 28) applications like GMail, K-9 Mail, WhatsApp etc.

As far as I see this is skipping the WordPress Android App completely. Would the simplest solution maybe be to replace this:
case 'android-app' : return 'WordPress Android App' with something like this case 'android-app' : return 'Android Apps';? I also don't think that the Android Application ID (= the com.google.android.gm thing) is a very useful field to show to the user since it's not very readable (even though it's unique).

@planarvoid I agree - returning 'Android Apps' instead of 'WordPress Android App' would reduce confusion here.
It would be nice if we were able to pull in the details of which app (Gmail, WhatsApp, etc as @sudiptog81 mentions) as well, as this would be more clear to users. They could then know that someone arrived at their site from the Gmail app, for instance. Just the change to 'Android Apps' would be a really good start though.

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