How metrics are calculated
MetriXs collects anonymous analytics without cookies, fingerprinting, or storing any personal data. This page explains the philosophy behind the numbers you see in your dashboard.
Core principles
Section titled “Core principles”- No cookies — MetriXs never reads or writes cookies.
- No persistent identifiers — visitor IDs are derived daily from a hash that resets at midnight UTC. The same visitor on two different days is counted as two separate visitors.
- No raw IP storage — IP addresses are used only to derive approximate country/city via GeoIP lookup and are never written to disk.
- No cross-site tracking — MetriXs data is scoped entirely to your domain.
What gets collected
Section titled “What gets collected”When the tracker fires an event, it sends:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Page URL | The full URL of the page |
| Referrer | The referring URL (if any) |
| User agent | Used to detect browser, OS, and device type |
| IP address | Used for geo lookup only, never stored |
| Domain | Your site’s domain |
| Event name | pageview or a custom event name |
How unique visitors are identified
Section titled “How unique visitors are identified”MetriXs generates a daily visitor hash using HMAC-SHA256. The daily salt is the HMAC key; the message combines a server secret, the visitor’s IP, their User-Agent, and your domain. This hash is stored (not the raw values), and the salt rotates every day at midnight UTC. This means:
- The same person visiting twice on the same day = 1 unique visitor
- The same person visiting on two different days = 2 unique visitors
- No visitor can be tracked across days or across sites
Metric definitions
Section titled “Metric definitions”See the individual pages for full definitions:
- Visits — what counts as a session
- Visitors — how unique visitors are counted
- Pageviews — what triggers a pageview
- Bounce rate — definition and caveats
- Visit duration — how time on site is measured