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Web Analytics Now Sees Your Navigation Types!

Cloudflare Changelog ★★★ View Markdown
#cloudflare#web#devops

Hi everyone, it's Shiichan! Today I've got a story about web analytics getting a little bit smarter, and I'm excited to share it.

Cloudflare Changelog developers.cloudflare.com

What was announced?

This one comes from Cloudflare's Changelog. Cloudflare Web Analytics now supports filtering and reporting by Navigation Type. You can see how a user arrived at a page, and whether browser caching kicked in along the way, right from the dashboard.

The story so far

Until now, Web Analytics let you see page views, visits, and performance metrics, but it couldn't separate whether a view came from a fresh navigation via a link click, a reload, or the back/forward button. That made it hard to judge whether browser caching was really doing its job.

What changes

A new Navigation Type dimension arrives, so you can tell at a glance whether a view happened via a fresh navigation, a reload, or back/forward, and whether the HTTP cache or the bfcache was hit in each case. For example, an unusually high number of reloads might be a sign of a problem. Looking at cache hit ratios to hunt for performance wins is the part I love.

Dive Deep

Navigation Type comes in three main flavors:

  • Navigate (a fresh navigation, with variants Navigate Cache / Navigate Prefetch Cache / Prerender)
  • Reload (with the variant Reload cache)
  • Back-forward (with the variant bfcache, aka Back-forward Cache)

In the dashboard, the dimension shows up on the Page Views tab, and you can filter it with the equals / does not equal / in / not in matchers. For what each value means, the Navigation Types docs have the details, so check there if you want to go deeper. And if you're curious about Web Analytics itself, start from the Cloudflare Web Analytics page.

Wrap-up

  • Cloudflare Web Analytics adds Navigation Type filtering and reporting
  • You can separate fresh navigations, reloads, and back/forward, each by cache state
  • Filter matchers are equals / does not equal / in / not in
  • It's available from the Page Views tab in the dashboard

If you want to optimize frontend caching or chase performance improvements, this is a quietly handy update for you!

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