Web Analytics Tools & Data Collection Flashcards

Why do analysts apply bot and spider filtering to analytics data?

Answer: To exclude known non-human traffic that distorts engagement and conversion metrics

Excluding known bots prevents automated traffic from inflating sessions and diluting rates.

What does data sampling mean in analytics reporting?

Answer: Analyzing a subset of data to estimate results when a query exceeds processing limits

Sampling extrapolates results from part of the data, which can reduce accuracy for large or complex queries.

Which is the most common way to exclude your own employees' visits from analytics reports?

Answer: Define internal traffic by IP address and filter it out

Internal traffic rules based on IP ranges tag and exclude office or staff visits from reports.

Your own domain appears as a top referral source in reports. What is the most likely cause?

Answer: Missing cross-domain or referral exclusion configuration causing self-referrals

Self-referrals usually arise when sessions are broken by checkout or subdomain hops without proper cross-domain setup or referral exclusions.

Which UTM parameter is generally used to indicate the marketing medium, such as email or cpc?

Answer: utm_medium

utm_medium describes the channel type (e.g., cpc, email, social), while utm_source names the specific origin.

What is the purpose of cross-domain tracking?

Answer: To preserve a single user's session and client ID as they move between your separate domains

Cross-domain tracking passes the client identifier (via a linker parameter) so one visit isn't split into multiple sessions.

When a user denies analytics storage consent under a consent mode setup, what can analytics platforms still do?

Answer: Send cookieless pings that feed conversion and behavioral modeling

Consent mode lets tags send cookieless signals that are used for modeled estimates while respecting the denial.