Labs/Test Pilot/Test Proposals/Duplicate Tabs

Champion

Boriss

Question

How often do users open a duplicate tab, i.e. open a tab and go to a URL which they already have open in another tab?

Data

We don't collect URLs, so we will have to do duplicate tab detection on the client side.

The tricky part is telling apart accidental duplicates from intentional duplicates. We may be able to get useful data from seeing if users close a lot of the duplicates they open. Also, seeing how long tabs are open could help (if a bank website is open long enough for the session to expire and a new instance is open, chances are the duplicate is not intentional).

Also, if can learn how users place and position their tabs, that could help us determine deliberacy. For instance, is a small gmail tab is always visible as a small window in the upper left, it is more likely to be deliberate than a gmail tab buried in a window and forgotten for several hours while the user is active on other instances.