Variances of Cloud Service content requests

Content requests can have variances within an organization’s Analytics reporting tools as summarized in the following table. In general, avoid using analytics tools that rely on client-side instrumentation to report the number of content requests for a site. These tools often miss a large portion of traffic because they depend on user consent to be activated. Analytics tools gathering data server-side in log files, or CDN reports for customers adding their own CDN on top of AEM as a Cloud Service, provide better counts.

Reason For VarianceExplanation
End user consentAnalytics tools relying on client-side instrumentation often depend on user consent to be triggered. This workflow could represent the majority of the traffic not being tracked. For customers who want to measure content requests on their own, it is recommended to rely on analytics tools gathering data server-side or CDN reports.
TaggingAll pages or API calls that are tracked as Adobe Experience Manager content requests may not be tagged with Analytics tracking.
Tag Management RulesTag management rule settings may result in various data collection configurations on a page, resulting in some combination of discrepancies with content request tracking.
BotsUnknown bots that AEM has not pre-identified and removed may cause tracking discrepancies.
Report SuitesPages that are part of the same AEM instance and domain may send data to different Analytics report suites.
Third-Party Monitoring and Security ToolsMonitoring and security scanning tools may generate content requests for AEM that are not tracked in Analytics reports.
API AccessProgrammatic access to pages or to Adobe Experience Manager APIs may generate content requests for AEM that are not tracked in Analytics reports.
Prefetch RequestsUsing a prefetch service to pre-load pages to increase speed can cause significant content request traffic increases.
DDOSWhile Adobe makes attempts to detect and filter out traffic automatically from DDOS attacks, there is no guarantee that all possible DDOS attacks are detected.
Traffic BlockersUsing a tracker blocker in a browser may opt out some requests from being tracked.
FirewallsFirewalls may block Analytics tracking. This scenario is more frequent with corporate firewalls.

Server-side collection rules

There are rules in place to exclude well-known bots, including well-known services visiting the site regularly to refresh their search index or service.

Types of included content requests

Request TypeContent RequestDescription
HTTP Code 100-299IncludedRegular requests that deliver all or partial content.
HTTP libraries for automationIncludedExamples:
• Amazon CloudFront
• Apache Http Client
• Asynchronous HTTP Client
• Axios
• Azureus
• Curl
• GitHub Node Fetch
• Guzzle
• Go-http-client
• Headless Chrome
• Java™ Client
• Jersey
• Node Oembed
• okhttp
• Python Requests
• Reactor Netty
• Wget
• WinHTTP
• Fast HTTP
• GitHub Node Fetch
• Reactor Netty
Monitoring and Health Check toolsIncludedSet up by the customer to monitor a certain aspect of the site. For example, availability or real-world user performance. If they are targeting specific endpoints like /system/probes/health for health checks, Adobe recommends that you use /system/probes/health endpoint and not the actual HTML pages from the site. See below
Examples:
Amazon-Route53-Health-Check-Service
• EyeMonIT_bot_version_0.1_(https://eyemonit.com/)
• Investis-Site24x7
• Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; https://uptimerobot.com/)
• ThousandEyes-Dragonfly-x1
• OmtrBot/1.0
• WebMon/2.0.0
<link rel="prefetch"> requestsIncludedTo increase the speed of loading the next page, customers can have the browser load a set of pages before the user clicks the link—so they are already in the cache. Mind: This approach increases the traffic significantly—depending on how many of these pages are prefetched.
Traffic that blocks Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics reportingIncludedIt is more common that visitors of sites have privacy software installed (Ad-blockers, and so on) that impact the accuracy of Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics. AEM as a Cloud Service counts requests on the first entry-point into the Adobe operated infrastructure and not the client-side.