AEM as a Cloud Service logs don’t directly identify unique visitors or concurrent users
This article explains how to assess daily unique visitors and concurrent website sessions for sites running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service. CDN and AEM logs record request data, not complete visitor or session histories. To estimate visitor and concurrent-session metrics, use a web analytics implementation configured for visitor identification and session reporting; use AEM Content Requests reporting to review request volume, not user counts.
Description description
Environment
- Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service
- Adobe Experience Manager Sites website with CDN and AEM logs
Issue/Symptoms
- You need to estimate the number of unique visitors to your AEM-powered site each day.
- You need to estimate how many website visitors are active at the same time.
- You need to determine whether CDN logs provide session-level details beyond request data such as client IP address, user agent, and request URL.
- You need to know whether AEM as a Cloud Service has a built-in method for calculating unique website visitors or concurrent sessions.
Cause
Standard CDN and AEM logs record HTTP requests rather than complete website visitor sessions. CDN logs include request-level details such as client IP address, user agent, and URL, but don’t provide a native visitor or session identifier. AEM HTTP Access logs include a User field, but AEM request and access logs don’t include requests served from the Publish Dispatcher cache or an upstream CDN. These logs don’t provide a complete count of unique visitors or concurrent sessions.
Resolution resolution
Follow the steps below to estimate unique and concurrent users:
- Review the CDN and AEM logs available for your site. Standard CDN logs record request-level details such as client IP address, user agent, and request URL; they don’t provide a native session or visitor identifier. AEM HTTP Access logs include a
Userfield, but they don’t include requests served from the Publish Dispatcher cache or an upstream CDN. - AEM as a Cloud Service doesn’t provide an out-of-the-box calculation of unique website visitors from CDN or AEM logs. If you create a log-based estimate, use custom processing such as grouping requests by client IP address and user agent. Treat the result as an approximation: shared IP addresses group multiple visitors together, and a changing IP address or user agent places one visitor’s requests into separate groups. Follow your organization’s privacy and retention requirements when processing IP and user-agent data.
- For visitor and session reporting, use a dedicated web analytics solution, such as Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics, configured to collect visitor identifiers and session data. Adobe Analytics’ Unique Visitors metric counts visitor IDs, not guaranteed distinct people; cookie clearing or using another browser or device creates another visitor ID. Define concurrent-session reporting separately; a unique-visitor total isn’t a concurrent-user count.
- Use AEM as a Cloud Service Content Requests reporting to review request volume, not unique visitors or concurrent sessions. Content Requests cover qualifying HTML or JSON requests used to deliver core content; static JavaScript and CSS requests aren’t included. For the definition and reporting details, see Understand Cloud Service content requests.