What’s a tracking ID?

This is for:

Developer Business Analyst

A tracking ID is a unique identifier that distinguishes and categorizes Coveo Usage Analytics (Coveo UA) data by site or application. It links all events within a single experience, streamlining the analysis of data such as user behavior and preferences.

A Coveo organization can serve many Coveo-powered commerce sites or applications, but all usage analytics events in a user’s journey should be tied together with a single tracking ID for accurate data analytics and consistency.

tracking IDs segregate the data gathered from each of these sites or applications to ensure personalized and relevant output from your Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML) models, usable reporting, and clear merchandising actions.

Each tracking ID points to a unique digital environment, such as a website or application, and serves to distinguish between distinct sites and their respective user journeys.

The tracking ID is defined when sending events to the Coveo Platform. Interfaces built with the Coveo Headless library or Atomic library automatically include the tracking ID in the events they send. While tracking ID values are specified when sending usage analytics events, each value that’s sent must be registered using a Property in your Coveo organization. To learn how to map your storefront architecture and use tracking IDs in Coveo for Commerce, refer to the Coveo for commerce setup guide.

Example

Your Coveo organization powers two brands: Barca sports and Barca parts. You operate in two different countries: United States and Canada.

Therefore, you have four different sites that require their own unique tracking ID to be sent with each event:

  • barca_sports_us

  • barca_sports_ca

  • barca_parts_us

  • barca_parts_ca

Each of these tracking IDs is registered using a property in your Coveo organization to ensure that the data is correctly sent:

  • Barca Sports US

  • Barca Sports CA

  • Barca Parts US

  • Barca Parts CA

Important

  • The trackingId parameter can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores (_), such as barca_sports_us1.

  • A single user journey can’t span multiple tracking IDs, and Coveo Usage Analytics (Coveo UA) data is segregated by tracking ID. When you analyze metrics like views, clicks, or conversions, the Advanced Reports will show them for each tracking ID.

  • Tracking IDs shouldn’t be confused with other factors such as the site’s domain, locale, or catalog ID.

Single vs. multiple tracking IDs

One tracking ID can span various locales or top-level domains, while multiple tracking IDs can be used for a single top-level domain.

Examples

  • Your website includes translated pages which contain the same core content. Each page is assigned the same tracking ID because the context remains the same regardless of language.

  • You have separate web properties that cater to North American and Asian audiences. Each property is assigned its own tracking ID because the content differs from one property to another.

When deciding between using single or multiple tracking IDs, you must consider the following:

  • An ecommerce ordering and checkout process can’t span more than one tracking ID because it represents a single journey.

  • A service episode can’t span more than one tracking ID because it represents a single journey, even though it may cross different top-level domains.

Tip
Leading practices

We recommend using different tracking IDs in the following scenarios:

  • Your web properties have different branding, different domains, and no cross-navigation.

  • Your web properties have the same top-level domain, but their individual audiences, indexed content, and visitor behavior are quite different, meaning there’s no cross-navigation in a single journey.

  • You want to explicitly separate reporting between properties.

    For example, the sites https://www.barca.com/nl-nl and https://www.barca.com/fr-fr could have different tracking IDs and be treated as separate sites with segregated reporting. Alternatively, they could be considered as a single site, using the same tracking ID for unified reporting. This choice depends on the setup you want and the similarity in the underlying content.

To obtain tracking IDs for multiple properties, contact your Coveo Customer Success Manager (CSM). With multiple tracking IDs, you can filter your data by ID and monitor your analytics. For example, you can view reports in the Coveo Administration Console or use the tabs on the Data Health (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page.

Tracking ID for non-production environments

When you’re developing or testing your Coveo-powered ecommerce site or application, you’ll likely use a non-production Coveo organization.

If you have many non-production environments that are all powered by the same non-production organization, you’ll need to define a tracking ID for each website or application in each of these environments. For example, you may have a development and a staging environment.

To ease identifying the tracking ID for each environment, we recommend using a naming convention that includes the environment name, such as barca_sports_dev.

Example

You have a non-production Coveo organization, to test the behavior of two sites, Barca sports and Barca parts.

Your non-production organization powers two different non-production environments: development and staging.

Therefore, you would have to define a tracking ID for each of your ecommerce sites or applications in each of these environments, as follows:

  • barca_sports_dev

  • barca_sports_staging

  • barca_parts_dev

  • barca_parts_staging