Question
How do I interpret Profile Insights errors and violations in Segment Unify, and do violations like "Identifier value limit exceeded" or "Profile merge limit exceeded" result in lost data or orphaned profiles?
Product
Segment Unify & Engage
Environment
Segment Console
Answer
Profile Insights violations in Segment Unify, such as "Identifier value limit exceeded" or "Profile merge limit exceeded" are normal and part of the usual identity resolution workflow. They indicate that a profile has reached a configured limit for identifiers or merges. When these limits are exceeded, Segment drops the lowest-priority identifier but continues to attach the event to the profile matched on the highest priority identifier. This means that events are not lost, and new or orphaned profiles are not created due to these violations. All violations follow this behavior, ensuring that data integrity is maintained and profiles are not split or orphaned as a result of these limits.
Additional Information
Profile Insights violations act as guardrails to prevent runaway merges or excessive identifiers, which can occur due to misconfigured identity rules or shared identifiers. For more details on specific violations and their handling, refer to the Segment Unify documentation on Profile Insights violations and errors.
You should only be concerned if you're seeing a lot of "Errors" in Profile Insights, as the Errors do mean that a message didn't resolve to a profile because Segment didn't find a matching identifier or the system behaved unexpectedly.