Collection scope

The tracker sends the registered site, normalized page path, event name, viewport class, and a constrained set of campaign or event properties. It does not deliberately collect URL fragments, arbitrary query strings, full outbound URLs, or full referrer paths. Site owners choose whether to install the tracker and which goals or custom events to define.

Ordinary delivery metadata is available to the server when an event arrives, including an IP address and user-agent string. The pipeline uses a rotating daily salt with site, network, and browser inputs to create a short-lived visitor estimate; it does not expose the raw network address as a dashboard dimension or place a persistent visitor identifier in the browser.

Core metric definitions

  • Pageview: one accepted pageview event for a registered site and normalized path.
  • Unique visitor: a daily estimate produced by deduplicating the product's rotating visitor identifier. Multi-day totals sum daily uniques and therefore are not a count of distinct humans across the whole period.
  • Session or visit: accepted activity grouped under the same daily visitor estimate until a 30-minute inactivity boundary or another documented split condition.
  • Goal conversion: an accepted event or path match that satisfies a site owner's defined goal. It reports observed matching activity, not causal incrementality.
  • Bounce: a session meeting the current methodology's single-page or engagement rule. It is sensitive to event configuration and does not mean the content was unhelpful.
  • Realtime: recently accepted activity inside the displayed rolling window, not a durable billing or historical total.

The product's live methodology page is authoritative for current numerical windows, plan quotas, retention, and detailed report semantics.

Acquisition attribution

Campaign tags, referrer classification, and direct traffic are descriptive acquisition categories. Explicit supported campaign tags can take precedence over referrer inference. Same-site navigation is not treated as a new external acquisition source. Browser referrer policy, privacy tools, redirects, applications, and untagged links can remove or distort the available source signal.

First-touch or session-level labels describe the implemented rule; they do not establish that a channel caused a visit, conversion, or revenue event. Causal measurement requires a suitable experiment, holdout, or other research design outside a standard traffic dashboard.

Known undercount and overcount

  • Content blockers, script failures, network failures, disabled JavaScript, and privacy tools can prevent collection.
  • Bots or automated browsers that pass filters can create accepted events; legitimate traffic can also be filtered.
  • Changing networks or user agents can split one person into multiple daily estimates.
  • Shared networks and similar browser signals can merge separate people into one estimate.
  • Single-page applications, duplicate tracker installation, prerendering, or custom-event errors can change counts.
  • Time zones and reporting-window boundaries affect period comparisons.

Retention and aggregation

Recent detailed events support filtered and goal reporting for the configured raw-retention window. Older periods use bounded daily rollups for longer-term trends. Deletion and retention settings are product configuration, not a promise that upstream hosting and infrastructure logs have identical lifecycles. Product and company privacy notices explain the relevant layers.

Reading a result responsibly

Check the metric definition, time zone, comparison period, collection changes, site releases, campaign-tag changes, consent or blocker changes, and the size of the count before assigning a narrative. A percentage change on a small base can look dramatic while representing few events. A dashboard can identify where to investigate; it cannot replace product context.

Privacy-conscious is not zero-data

Cookieless means the tracker does not require a persistent analytics cookie. The service still processes limited event and request data to operate. Site owners remain responsible for their own notices, configuration, lawful basis, and use of custom properties.

Reference standards

Published 13 July 2026 · Last materially reviewed 13 July 2026 · Metric questions or corrections: support@flintglade.com