What is the difference between Page, Event, Action, and Download URL?

Matomo provides various URL types to track user interactions on a website, such as the Page, Event, Action, and Download URL. The different URL types can offer comprehensive insights into user behaviour and engagement across your website’s content.

This guide clarifies the distinct differences between these URLs and their usage for data segmentation and filtering.

Page URL

The Page URL represents the URL of a standard page view on your website, which is the most common and useful URL for tracking specific page views and user navigation.

• Example: When a visitor goes to a web page /urltest, the Page URL recorded is /urltest.

The Page URL is a valuable metric for precise tracking and segmentation of page views and visits.

Event URL

The Event URL refers to the URL of the page where an event was fired.

• Example: If a button on /urltest/downloadpage fires an event, the Event URL recorded is /urltest/downloadpage indicating where the event occurred.

The Event URL identifies pages where specific events are taking place, which is helpful for knowing what pages generate the most events. Its limitation is that it only provides the URL of the page where an event was triggered and it does not offer detail on the actual event data. The event data is usually more relevant for in-depth analysis and understanding user interactions.

Action URL

The Action URL is a roll-up of all other URL types encompassing all types of interactions, including page views, events, and downloads.

• Example: Loading a page twice and triggering four events on a page will count as six Action URL hits on the same URL.

The Action URL has a broad scope as it consolidates a range of interactions into one metric, so filtering by this URL type may lack specifics and it may not be effective for detailed segmentation or analysis. However, the Action URL can be useful in Custom Reports to display the specific URL where content was viewed.

You can also add a filter in Custom Reports to report on a specific type of action and its metrics, for example a site search or event.

Download URL

The Download URL records the URL of any file downloaded from your website.

• Example: A visitor clicks a link on /urltest/downloadpage to download a file named download.txt. The URL of the downloaded file is recorded as /download.txt.

The Download URL is useful for tracking individual file downloads to monitor the popularity of downloadable content.

To track the specific page from which the file was downloaded, you can implement an action-scoped custom dimension. As a result, you can report on the Download URL and the Page URL where the download originated.

You can then add the following code to your tracker script, so when a visitor clicks to download a file, the Page URL is captured and associated with the download event: _paq.push(['setCustomDimension', CUSTOM_DIMENSION_ID, window.location.href]);

Example

By creating Custom Reports using the different URL types as the dimension and measuring hits as the metric, you can improve the accuracy of your analytics and gain more actionable insights.

The following example of the Visits Log summarises how Matomo tracks the following interactions:

Page URL

• Load homepage = 1 hit
• Load secondary page = 2 hits

Event URL

• Event triggered for every button click on the page = 4 hits

Download URL

• File downloads = 8 hits

Action URL

• Load homepage = 1 hit
• Load secondary page = 2 hits
• Event triggered = 4 hits
• File downloads = 8 hits
• This equates to a total of 15 hits for the Action URL, which includes all types of actions tracked to this URL.