Question

Why are only certain profiles or no profiles returned when searching by identifiers that are associated with a user's Profile in Profile Explorer?

Product

Segment Unify & Engage

Environment

Segment Console

Answer

Profile Explorer executes searches strictly against three standard identity fields: user_id, email, and anonymous_id.

The following examples reference a profile with an anonymous_id of 123, email_address of user1@example.com, and a user_id of user1.

When you search for a specific value in Profile Explorer, the system checks whether that value matches any of these three primary fields on your user profiles:

• Profile Match: A search of user1 or 123 within the Profile Explorer produces an exact match and successfully returns the profile, as these are both identities in searchable identity fields.
• Profile Mismatch: A search of user1@example.com uses a different field (email_address) than the standard email field. This means that a match will not be returned for the expected profile.
  • Updating the profile to use the standard email field with the same content will cause it to appear normally in searches again.

To locate a profile in Profile Explorer, you must search using a value that is explicitly stored in one of its primary searchable identity fields. For example, if a profile's user_id is populated with an email address but the email field is not filled in, searching for that email address value will return the profile. However, if a profile's user_id and email fields are not populated and a profile_id field is populated, searching for that email address value will not return the profile.