Clarification Needed: Differentiating Event URL, Action URL, and Page URL

[Chardonneaur]

Hi team,

Seeking clarification on the distinctions between "Event URL," "Action URL," and "Page URL" within Matomo. The current documentation does not clearly differentiate these terms, leading to confusion about their appropriate use in analytics. A concise, detailed guide explaining each term's unique aspects and best practices for their use in filtering/segmentation would greatly benefit users for more effective data analysis. Please have a look at: https://forum.matomo.org/t/difference-between-action-url-and-page-url/40622/30 if it can help.

[araichyk]

Hi @Chardonneaur ,

Thank you for your question and for bringing this to our attention.

To better understand these terms, I conducted an experiment where I set up a test website with the following components:

• Homepage at /urltest
• Secondary page at /urltest/downloadpage
• Button on /urltest/downloadpage that fires an event
• Link on /urltest/downloadpage that downloads a file at /download.txt

I then created a fresh Matomo instance to track the website and performed the following interactions:

• 1 load of the homepage
• 2 loads of the secondary page
• 4 button clicks
• 8 file downloads

Here's the Visits Log:

Next, I set up Custom Reports using the different URL types as the dimension and measuring "hits" as the metric. The results were as follows:

Page URL:

• Load homepage = 1 hit
• Load secondary page = 2 hits

Event URL:

• Event triggered = 4 hits

Download URL:

• File downloads = 8 hits

Action URL:

• Load homepage = 1 hit
• Load secondary page = 2 hits
• Event triggered = 4 hits
• File downloads = 8 hits

Here are the screenshots of those four Custom Reports:

Note that:

• The initial website test involved a total of 15 (1+2+4+8) actions.
• The sum of hits for Page URL + Event URL + Download URL is 15.
• The hits for Action URL alone is 15.

Based on the findings from the experiment and the information provided, I would define the different URL types as follows:

• Page URL: The URL for a typical pageview.
• Event URL: The URL of the page from which an event was fired.
• Download URL: The URL of a file that was downloaded.
• Action URL: A roll-up of all other URL types. Every other URL is a type or subcategory of Action URL.

This relationship is defined in the code around line 25 of core/Tracker/Action.php. There you can see all the different "types" that an "Action" can be. Some of those types are PAGE_URL, DOWNLOAD, and EVENT, which are the 3 event types that I tested above.

In terms of their uses for segmentation and filtering:

• Page URL is the most valuable, as it allows for precise tracking and segmentation of pageviews and visits.
• Event URL has limited usefulness, as it only provides the URL of the page where an event was triggered, rather than the actual event data. While it can help identify which pages are generating the most events, the event data itself is typically more relevant for in-depth analysis and understanding user interactions.
• Download URL is helpful for tracking individual file downloads. This wasn't part of your original question, but it was helpful for the experiment.
• Action URL, due to its wide scope, may not provide the most accurate or useful information for segmentation and may even produce misleading results. For example, in the experiment, loading a page twice and triggering four events on that page counted as six Action URL hits on the same URL.

We can add formal documentation for this once we're satisfied with the URL definitions and their uses.

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or need additional assistance.

[Chardonneaur]

Hi @araichyk this is exactly what we were looking for, for a very long time, is it possible to write a formal documentation with exactly the content you just wrote? Thank you,