---
title: Configuring web analytics
related:
  - https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/managing-your-on-line-marketing-features/web-analytics.md
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

Web analytics provide a way to measure and later analyze key metrics of your website such as visits, page views, file downloads, traffic sources and much more.

To be able to work with metrics in the **Web analytics** application, you need to have the permissions for the [Web analytics](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-on-line-marketing-permissions.md#web-analytics) module.

First, you need to enable web analytics and select the logging method:

- [Enable web analytics](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/enabling-web-analytics.md)

In order to correctly log incoming traffic from search engines, you need to define objects representing individual search engines:

- [Manage search engines for web analytics](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/managing-search-engines-for-web-analytics.md)

Furthermore, you can configure which actions you want to log as custom conversions on your sites:

- [Configure logging of actions as custom conversions](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/configuring-logging-of-actions-as-custom-conversions.md)

Additionally, you can use [Web analytics API](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/web-analytics-api.md) to log custom actions as conversions or add tracking of custom actions as web analytics:

- [Log custom conversions through the API](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/web-analytics-api/logging-custom-conversions-through-the-api.md)
- [Add custom web analytics](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/web-analytics-api/adding-custom-web-analytics.md)

You can also configure the system to automatically delete old web analytics data that is no longer needed:

- [Set up automatic web analytics data cleanup](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/setting-up-automatic-web-analytics-data-cleanup.md)

If you encounter problems or unexpected behavior related to web analytics, you can use the system's debugging functionality:

- [Debug web analytics](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/on-line-marketing-features/configuring-and-customizing-your-on-line-marketing-features/configuring-web-analytics/debugging-web-analytics.md)

## How web analytics work

When a tracked event (such as a page view, file download, etc.) occurs, the system stores a record in the application's memory. The application then periodically writes the memory records into log files in the _\~/App\_Data/CMSModules/WebAnalytics_ folder. The names of the files use the following format: _\_\_.log_

> **Note:** **Disabling memory logging for analytics**
>
> The intermediate memory storage step improves the performance of the web analytics logging on high-traffic websites. The logging does not use up a significant amount of memory, but you can configure the system to directly log analytics records into physical files if you need to fully minimize the application's memory usage.
>
> Add the following key to the _appSettings_ section of the application's _web.config_ file:
>
> ```html
>
> <add key="CMSWebAnalyticsUseMemoryStorage" value="false" />
>
> ```

The **Process analytics log** global [scheduled task](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/configuring-kentico/scheduling-tasks.md) reads the content of all analytics log files every minute (or other scheduled interval) and imports the processed data into the database. You can view the status of the scheduled task and configure its settings in the **Scheduled tasks** application.

> **Note:** **Process analytics log on a web farm**
>
> If your environment is configured to run in a web farm, you need to configure the **Process analytics log** scheduled task to be executed on each of the web farm servers individually. See [Configuring scheduled tasks to be executed on every server of a web farm](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/configuring-kentico/optimizing-website-performance/setting-up-web-farms/configuring-web-farm-servers.md#configuring-scheduled-tasks-to-be-executed-on-every-server-of-a-web-farm).

This data is then loaded from the database and presented in an easy to read format using web analytics reports (defined through the [Reporting](https://docs.kentico.com/k10/configuring-kentico/working-with-system-reports.md) application).

> **Info:** **Limitations**
>
> Web analytics only track content and events related to pages managed by Kentico. It cannot track other content, such as html files or media files that are not served by Kentico.
>
> You may notice a delay between the time that an event occurs on the website and the time the web analytics statistics are updated. All tracked events are first stored in temporary files on the local file system and need to be processed by a scheduled task.