# Web Analytics Now Sees Your Navigation Types!

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.

## 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/data-metrics/dimensions/#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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/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!