"Most Popular Content" table displaying page titles in different languages since 1.42.0

[jamesozzie]

Bug Description

Since the release of 1.42.0 there have been reports of unusual page title tiles in the "Most Popular Content" table. The titles of some pages are in different languages, including Chinese and German. In one users case this is occurring on both of their sites.

These sites don't have language variations of their content, or have any language plugin active.

In a screenshot kindly provided by one user within their SH info it displays this behavior. You'll notice that while the page titles are in a different language within the "Most populate content" table they do seem to match the actual title if the titles were to be translated.

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/most-popular-content-broken-2/#post-14921621 | Open | SH info
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/error-message-translated-page-titles/ | Open | SH info 1 | SH info 2

• One user is also encountering what looks like Google Charts Library related issues. These dashboard errors are not evident for the other user. Possibly related to Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'load') #4074
• There were some recent changes to the chart libraries as of 1.42.0. Possibly related to Changing the title of a page or post results in that URL appearing twice in the "Most Popular Content" table #3070

Screenshots

Additional Context

• SK 1.42.0
• This didn't occur previously for one of the impacted users (previous topic | related GH issue)
• One impacted user confirmed they never had a language plugin active or title variations of their pages

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Acceptance criteria

• The page titles report, used in the getPageTitles selector, should sort response rows by page views descending.

Implementation Brief

• Update the object of options used for the page titles report to include the orderby parameter, which should be an array with a single object:
  • fieldName: 'ga:pageviews'
  • sortOrder: DESCENDING

Test Coverage

• No changes should be necessary, but it may require some VRT images are updated as a result of this change

QA Brief

• Verify the getPageTitles() selector sorts page titles by their page views (eg. ga:pageviews) in descending order as per the ACs/IB. There aren't easy steps-to-reproduce this bug here to QA, so this should be sufficient to QA it 🙂

Changelog entry

• Fix a bug that could cause the page title in the "Most Popular Content" table to appear in an unexpected language

[jamesozzie]

The same occurs for one impacted user with all plugins deactivated and using a core theme - from a Chrome browser incognito window. Further checks being performed.

[mxbclang]

Moving to L1; @jamesozzie leaving a note for you in Asana now.

[eugene-manuilov]

Looks like Google Analytics somehow tracks pages translated by Chrome and then we pick this information by accident when we try to aggregate page views by page URLs. I think we can fix it by adding orderby to sort page titles by page views descending. In this case, even if there are records with translated titles, they will be ignored because their page views should be much lower than for the main language.

[eugene-manuilov]

@aaemnnosttv can you check my AC?

[aaemnnosttv]

@eugene-manuilov ACs LGTM (I think we were planning on making this change anyways) – were you able to confirm that Google translate is the cause here or are we assuming?

[eugene-manuilov]

 were you able to confirm that Google translate is the cause here or are we assuming?

@aaemnnosttv unfortunately, I wasn't. That's my best hunch.

[aaemnnosttv]

Thanks @eugene-manuilov, it sounds reasonable but I'm not sure we should use this as the AC for this issue in particular without knowing that it would solve the problem. Maybe we should do this anyways in a separate issue and follow it here?

Thoughts @felixarntz ?

[felixarntz]

@aaemnnosttv @eugene-manuilov I think going with this approach here should be fine. As mentioned, that is something we were thinking might be helpful anyway, and I could see how this "bug" is caused by not using any particular sorting. I'd say if this ends up not fixing the problem, we can still reopen the issue or open a follow-up one. IMO, the ACs are good to go.

[eugene-manuilov]

IB ✔️

[raja-anbazhagan]

Looks like Google Analytics somehow tracks pages translated by Chrome and then we pick this information by accident when we try to aggregate page views by page URLs. I think we can fix it by adding orderby to sort page titles by page views descending. In this case, even if there are records with translated titles, they will be ignored because their page views should be much lower than for the main language.

Instead of assuming the page views should be lower for translated pages, can we map the URLs from Google Analytics and map them with the slug from WordPress? We anyways show only the top pages. There shouldn't be any performance hit.

[kuasha420]

I am seeing that orderby with the parameters from IB is already implemented in develop here.

site-kit-wp/assets/js/modules/analytics/components/dashboard/DashboardPopularPagesWidget.js

Lines 80 to 91 in 1f783fc

	orderby: [
	{
	fieldName: 'ga:pageviews',
	sortOrder: 'DESCENDING',
	},
	],
	limit: 10,
	};
	const report = store.getReport( args );
	const pageTitles = store.getPageTitles( report, args );

Did this get implemented as part of another issue or am I missing something here?

cc @aaemnnosttv @eugene-manuilov

[aaemnnosttv]

@kuasha420 this issue is about making a change to the getPageTitles selector which makes a separate call to getReport internally which is different than the main report it's called with.
See

site-kit-wp/assets/js/modules/analytics/datastore/report.js

Line 208 in 298ca37

getPageTitles: createRegistrySelector(

[eugene-manuilov]

@kuasha420, we forgot to mention it in IB that report arguments need to be updated in storybook stories too. Please, update the following report arguments:

site-kit-wp/stories/module-analytics-components.stories.js

Lines 363 to 375 in 1f783fc

	{
	startDate: '2020-08-13',
	endDate: '2020-09-09',
	dimensionFilters: {
	'ga:pagePath': new Array( 10 )
	.fill( '' )
	.map( ( _, i ) => `/test-post-${ i + 1 }/` )
	.sort(),
	},
	dimensions: [ 'ga:pagePath', 'ga:pageTitle' ],
	metrics: [ { expression: 'ga:pageviews', alias: 'Pageviews' } ],
	limit: 50,
	},

site-kit-wp/stories/module-analytics-components.stories.js

Lines 457 to 469 in 1f783fc

	{
	startDate: '2020-12-09',
	endDate: '2021-01-05',
	dimensionFilters: {
	'ga:pagePath': new Array( 10 )
	.fill( '' )
	.map( ( _, i ) => `/test-post-${ i + 1 }/` )
	.sort(),
	},
	dimensions: [ 'ga:pagePath', 'ga:pageTitle' ],
	metrics: [ { expression: 'ga:pageviews', alias: 'Pageviews' } ],
	limit: 50,
	},

[kuasha420]

Thank you both for the clarification. <3 @eugene-manuilov @aaemnnosttv

[kuasha420]

@aaemnnosttv @eugene-manuilov not sure what to put in QA Brief for this one. Any help will be appreciated.

[tofumatt]

@kuasha420 Given there aren't clear steps-to-reproduce here I think it's fine to mark this one as QA:Eng and have the QA steps be to verify the implementation. It's not ideal but I think it's fine for this one 🙂

I added a simple QA brief and the QA: Eng label 👍🏻

[ivankruchkoff]

QA✅
Sorted by views descending, I can confirm the following args in the request.

orderby: [
  { fieldName: 'ga:pageviews', sortOrder: 'DESCENDING' },
]

I don't see unusual page titles, but when I checked versions 1.41 and 1.42, I also didn't see them.

[raja-anbazhagan]

I'm at 1.44.0 and I'm still seeing Spanish titles for my pages on English.

[jamesozzie]

@raja-anbazhagan We'll have the latest version of Site Kit released early next week. This fix will be part of that release so hopefully you'll not longer encounter this behavior at that point. Be sure to let us know the outcome once you test it!

[raja-anbazhagan]

@jamesozzie I misread the update from @ivankruchkoff. Is there a snapshot version available for me to test?

[mxbclang]

@raja-anbazhagan We do not offer pre-release testing versions, but as @jamesozzie noted, this will likely be released on Monday. If you're still having trouble after updating, please open a new support topic on our support forum and we'd be happy to take another look – all support for Site Kit is provided there on the forums. Thank you!

[jamesozzie]

@raja-anbazhagan Just to let you know that Site Kit 1.45.0 has been released. Can you give that a try and confirm that the most popular content table works as expected with these latest changes?

[raja-anbazhagan]

@jamesozzie Works perfectly. Thanks.