Audience targeting

By default, a test runs against every visitor on every page that contains its markup. Audience rules let you narrow that.

A visitor only enters a test if they pass all of its audience rules. Visitors who fail any rule see the unchanged page (data-split-variant elements stay in place, classes and styles are not applied) and are not counted in the test’s results.

Supported rules

Rule	Type	Values
URL include	List of strings	Each is a case-insensitive substring of `pathname + search`
URL exclude	List of strings	Same matching, but any match rejects the visitor
Country	List of ISO-2 codes	Country is determined server-side from the visitor’s IP — not from the browser, so it can’t be spoofed by client code
Device	`desktop` / `mobile` / `tablet`	Classified server-side from the User-Agent
Visitor type	`new` / `returning` / `logged_in`	New = no prior `_shopify_y` or `splt_usr_id` cookie. Returning = either cookie present. Logged in = Shopify customer session active

All rules combine with AND. Each list within a rule (URL includes, URL excludes, countries) combines with OR.

URL matching is substring, not glob

This is the part that most often surprises people: the matcher is a plain case-insensitive substring check, not a wildcard or regex match.

You want to match	Use
Every product page	`/products/`
Every collection page	`/collections/`
One specific collection	`/collections/winter-sale`
Visitors arriving from a UTM source	`utm_source=newsletter`
Just the cart page	`/cart` (also matches `/cart/anything` — accept that, or use exclude rules to narrow)

Do not use *. A pattern like /products/* will only match a URL that literally contains the string /products/*, which essentially never happens. Drop the asterisk.

If you need anchored or exact matching, the easiest way is to write the URL with its trailing context (? or end-of-path) — but remember the haystack is pathname + search, lowercased. There is no way to anchor to start-of-path; if /cart matches both /cart and /cart-recovery, exclude the unwanted one with an URL exclude rule.

Country targeting

Country is determined server-side from the visitor’s IP. It works without an IP geolocation library on your side and cannot be spoofed by client code.

Country codes are ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (DE, US, SE, GB). Case is normalised before comparison.

If the country cannot be resolved (rare — mainly bots and some VPNs), the visitor is rejected whenever country targeting is set.

Audience rules run on every request

A returning visitor is re-evaluated against the audience rules on every page view, not just on first entry. If they hit a page that doesn’t match the URL rules, they get no variant assignment for that page view — even if they previously received one on a different page.

This means:

If your test’s markup appears on multiple URL patterns but only one is in the include list, the variant only applies on the included URL.
A visitor who entered the test in country US and then routes through a VPN to DE will be rejected if the test is country-locked to US.

If you only want the variant to render on the included URLs, only put the test’s markup on those pages. The sticky-assignment cookie speeds up subsequent page loads, but the audience rules are still checked on every request.

What “rejected by audience” means for results

A visitor who fails any rule is not logged as a participant for that test. They are not in any variant’s denominator, they do not affect conversion rates, and they do not contribute to sample size calculations.

Common patterns

Run a test only on the homepage. URL include: leave empty if / is the only path; otherwise add / (which matches everything). URL exclude: /products/, /collections/, /pages/, /cart, /account, /blogs/.

Test only US visitors on product pages. URL include: /products/ Countries: US

Test only new mobile visitors on a campaign landing page. URL include: /pages/spring-sale Device: mobile Visitor type: new

Avoid testing during checkout flow pages. URL exclude: /cart, /checkout

Preview bypasses audience rules

Audience rules are bypassed for preview links so you can verify a variant from any URL, country, device, or visitor type.