Events

This is for:

Business Analyst System Administrator

A Coveo Analytics event represents a single recorded user interaction in a Coveo-powered search interface. Each event contains a set of parameters that describe what happened (for example, a search or a click), along with contextual metadata such as the user, session, context, and more.

Events power analytics reporting in the Coveo Administration Console, including the Visit Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) and reports. They’re also leveraged by Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML) to build models that improve relevance and personalize the search experience.

Events can be logged either client-side or server-side, depending on your implementation and the protocol used. Coveo Analytics stores them in a unified event model. This ensures consistent reporting, dimensions, and ML behavior across implementations.

Example

A user types hdmi issue in the search box of a Coveo-powered search interface and submits the query. As a result, a search event is then logged and stored in Coveo Analytics. The recorded event metadata and dimensions appear in the Visit Browser as one element under the user visit. For example:

Visit Browser interface showing search details | Coveo Platform

The same event is also included in reports with a matching scope.

Coveo Analytics groups events into the following event categories: search, click, view, and custom.[1]

Search events represent interactions that trigger a query through a usage-based API. They’re used to calculate metrics such as Search Event Count. Search events can represent:

  • Manual searches initiated by a user.

  • Automatic searches triggered by the interface.

  • Search refinements (for example, selecting facets or paging through results).

Examples

  • A user enters keywords in a search box and submits a query.

  • A user clicks the next results page.

  • A user refines results by selecting facets.

For a complete list of action causes, see Search Event Cause.

Click

Click events represent interactions with a search result or recommendation. They’re used to calculate metrics such as Average Click Rank and Click Event Count.

Examples

  • A user clicks an item to view it.

  • A user opens a quick view preview.

  • A user clicks a recommended item.

For a complete list of action causes, see Click Event Cause.

View

View events represent access to tracked content, regardless of how the user arrived at the page. Unlike click events that track the interaction itself, view events track content consumption. They’re commonly used by Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML) for the Content Recommendations service.

Example

A user loads a page that was previously recommended to them.

Custom

Note

Custom data can only be leveraged when using the UA Protocol. If your Coveo implementation uses the Event Protocol, custom event types shouldn’t be added to a report since they won’t function as expected.

Custom events represent user interactions that aren’t classified as search, click, or view events.

Examples

  • A user selects the number of results to display per page.

  • A user clicks a custom navigation button.

For a complete list of custom event types, see custom event types.

Events across different integrations

Coveo Analytics uses the same standard event types across all implementations. However, how these events are used and enriched vary depending on the context.

For instance, in commerce implementations, events capture product-related interactions such as product views, add to cart actions, and purchases. These interactions are supported by additional event schemas and dimensions, enabling commerce-specific reporting such as revenue and conversion metrics.

In knowledge-driven implementations (such as support or workplace search), events are used to analyze how users interact with search results and generated answers. Additional insights, such as answer rate, cited content, and user engagement, are derived from these interactions.

Regardless of the implementation, all events are stored and reported consistently in Coveo Analytics.

How events are logged

Events are logged either server-side or client-side, depending on your implementation and the protocol you use.

Server-side logging

When using the Event Protocol, search events can be logged automatically when executing queries.

  • Search API: Set analytics.capture to true in your search requests.

  • Commerce API: Set context.capture to true in your commerce queries.

When capture is enabled, the API logs the corresponding search event server-side using the request metadata. Frameworks such as Coveo Atomic and Coveo Headless enable server-side search event logging by default.

Client-side logging

Client-side logging occurs when the browser or application sends analytics events to Coveo. This approach is typically used for click, view, and custom events. Client-side events can be sent using the Event Protocol or the UA protocol. The UA protocol relies primarily on client-side logging.

1. Coveo Analytics also supports collect events, which are sent to the Collect endpoint using the Google Measurement Protocol. These events can be used in UA-based commerce implementations and are mapped to standard Coveo Analytics events. However, for new implementations, we recommend capturing commerce events using the Event Protocol instead.