CODEWITHSUNDEEP
analytics
kaid
kaid

Reputation: 1249

Why do analytics use 1x1 pixels?

What are the reasons that cause plugin analytics to use 1x1 img pixels to call their code? What permissions does this shortcut?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 749

Answers (2)

Lion
Lion

Reputation: 17908

Behind these image is a server-based script like php, python or so on which can get and log information about the visitor (visited page, referer, ip, ...) for the tracking-stats. The server will be able to get all information you can get on the serverside from a http-request. The benefits of this methods are that it works on nearly all browsers and devices. Its also lightweight because an 1x1 image will cause nearly zero bandwitch.

Its a common solution to track pageviews. To get more flexible, some alternative tracking-methods like pwiki don't even use javascript. They're inserting a tracking-pixel which also works when the user has javascript disabled or he is using some plugins which remove tracking-scripts.

It also works on emails so that the sender has information about which and how much users read for example a newsletter-mail. But nowadays nearly all deskto- and webclients are blocking images in emails by default to prevent these tracking-methods. Images will only be displayed when the user explicit allow this for a specific domain.

Upvotes: 1

Albin Stigo
Albin Stigo

Reputation: 2131

The server hosting the 1x1px image logs the request. This allows collecting statistics about who loads (and renders) the page with the image. Browsers in general allow cross origin in img tags.

Also, this allows javascript to be loaded from the same domain as the image.

Upvotes: 1

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