User Management

What is Identity Resolution?

Q: What is Identity Resolution?

The process of merging multiple anonymous and identified user records into a single unified user profile.

Identity resolution is the process of connecting multiple identifiers — anonymous IDs, email addresses, device IDs, and user IDs — that all belong to the same person into a single unified profile.

This is challenging because a single user might visit your site from multiple devices, use different browsers, or interact before and after signing up. Each of these touchpoints can create a separate anonymous identity that needs to be merged.

Effective identity resolution gives you a complete view of each user's journey across devices and sessions. Without it, a single user might appear as three different visitors in your analytics, inflating your user count and fragmenting their behavioral data.

Example

A user browses on their phone (anonymous ID A), then on their laptop (anonymous ID B), then signs up on their laptop (user ID 123). Identity resolution merges all three identities, revealing that this user visited 8 times across 2 devices before signing up.

Related Terms

User Identification

The process of associating analytics data with a known user identity, linking anonymous activity to a real person.

Anonymous User

A website visitor who has not been identified, tracked using a randomly generated anonymous ID.

Session Tracking

The process of monitoring and recording user sessions to understand visit-level behavior and engagement.

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