Generate and interpret Content Request usage reports in AEM as a Cloud Service
This article explains how to generate and analyze Content Request usage reports in Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, including guidance on distinguishing billable requests from those excluded by Adobe’s Content Request rules.
Description description
Environment
Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (all versions)
Issue/Symptoms
- Organizations using Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service need to analyze Content Request usage to understand what drives licensed consumption and distinguish billable traffic from excluded traffic, such as bot or crawler requests. This analysis is important for managing licensing and optimizing traffic patterns.
- Need to report on Content Request usage for the last 30 days, broken down by URL/path, hostname, User-Agent or bot classification, response content type, and date.
- Need to identify top URLs and User-Agents contributing to billable Content Requests, including request counts and percentage of total usage.
- Need to distinguish counted or billable Content Requests from those excluded by Adobe’s Content Request rules, particularly bot or crawler traffic.
- If using a Bring Your Own CDN (BYO-CDN) configuration, only traffic forwarded to Adobe’s CDN is included in these reports, which may not match total end-user traffic.
Cause
Organizations require detailed Content Request usage analysis but must account for Adobe’s exclusion rules and the limitations of available CDN log data.
Resolution resolution
Follow the steps below to resolve the issue:
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Clarify your reporting requirements:
- Confirm which environment and tier you want to analyze.
- Decide if you need CDN-level data (recommended for licensing) or AEM instance-level data.
- Determine if you need a summarized top-N breakdown or raw request-level data.
- Identify any specific URLs or patterns to focus on.
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Access your CDN logs:
- Download the relevant CDN log files for your environment and time period.
- Review fields such as URL/path, hostname, User-Agent, response content type, and timestamp.
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Analyze the CDN logs:
- Filter requests by content type.
- Group and summarize the data by URL/path, hostname, User-Agent, content type, and date as needed.
- Calculate request counts and percentage of total usage for each dimension.
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Approximate billable versus excluded requests by using the request classifications because the logs do not contain a native billable flag.
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Validate the results against the License Dashboard in Cloud Manager by comparing your analysis with the reported usage metrics.
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Verify the analysis by comparing your summarized results with the counts shown in Cloud Manager’s License Dashboard and confirming that the results align directionally with Adobe’s official usage metrics.
Notes
- Billable requests return
text/htmlorapplication/jsoncontent types and are not identified as bots or crawlers. - Excluded requests are identified by the CDN as known bots or crawlers or have User-Agent strings that match known bot patterns.
- Not-counted requests return non-HTML or non-JSON content such as images, CSS, JavaScript, and fonts.
- Adobe counts one Content Request for every five JSON API calls.
- The authoritative billable count is available in Cloud Manager’s License Dashboard.
- CDN log analysis provides directional insights and may differ from License Dashboard metrics because of server-side exclusions.
- In a Bring Your Own CDN (BYO-CDN) configuration, reports include only traffic forwarded to Adobe’s CDN and may not represent total end-user traffic.