---
title: Engagement Analytics
description: How admins read visitor activity, anonymous visitor labels, and media engagement in Preservated.
section: guides
order: 21
updated: 2026-07-15
verified: 2026-07-15
related: [guides/public-discovery, guides/downloads-and-sharing, guides/ai-tools-and-provenance]
features: [engagement-analytics]
---

# Engagement Analytics

You'll see which public collection experiences are drawing attention and which anonymous visitor actions belong to the same browser actor.

Open **Admin -> Engagement** for an institution to review views, unique visitors, downloads, tour plays, favorites, shares, top artifacts, top tours, and recent activity. The cards and chart can be switched between 24 hours, 7 days, and 30 days.

## Anonymous visitor labels

Anonymous visitors are tracked through Preservated's first-party anonymous actor cookie. The activity feed shows a stable readable label, such as `Clever-Blue-Fox`, instead of a generic `Anon` label. That name is generated from the anonymous actor id already stored on engagement events; it is not derived from IP address, user agent, device characteristics, or browser fingerprinting.

Use these labels to follow one anonymous visitor's sequence of public actions in the recent activity feed. The label is only an admin readability aid. It does not identify the person, and it can change if the visitor clears cookies or uses a different browser.

Actions taken by signed-in users appear under the person's name (hover to see their email), so you can tell members apart from anonymous visitors at a glance.

## Stats on the artifact page

Editors and admins also get a quick per-artifact readout without leaving the item: a **Stats** control in the artifact page's action row opens a hover card with views, unique viewers, downloads, tour plays, favorites, shares, and gallery adds for that one artifact. It's admin-only and never shown to visitors.

## What is recorded

Engagement records include public page and item views, downloads, shares, favorites, gallery adds, tour starts/pauses/completions, IIIF viewer opens, IIIF zoom and pan events, and audio/video starts/pauses/completions from the artifact viewer.

Events respect Do Not Track for optional analytics. Operational records that are required for security, quotas, billing, or explicitly requested actions may still be kept under their own policies.

## Current limits

Recent activity shows target type and id, not every artifact title inline. Top artifact rows resolve titles, but raw activity rows stay compact so the feed remains fast.

Search result click/refinement analytics are supported by the event model, but not all public search entry points emit those events yet.