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Default Event Tracking as part of our Browser SDK 2.0

Related products: Product Analytics

Hi customers! Today we’re excited to announce our Browser SDK 2.0 update, which includes Default Event Tracking. 

What is Default Event Tracking (DET)? 

Default Event Tracking logs generic and common events when setting up applicable SDKs, accelerating your time to insights. We’ll be updating our Browser SDK to automatically instrument and track a predefined set of events.

Here are the default events and event properties: 

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  2. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPog Form Started
    1. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPog Form ID
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What does this mean for you?

Default event tracking provides customers significant value since it removes some of the burden to instrument and define every event. But, default event tracking does apply to your event volume. 

For new customers, if you choose the Browser SDK, you’ll be instructed to download the new version with Default Event Tracking during onboarding. 

For existing customers, you’ll get notified to upgrade to the latest version of the SDK and need to manually turn Default Event Tracking off if you prefer to not track these events automatically.

How can I turn off or block the events from Default Event Tracking? 

  • You can choose which DET events you want to turn off or on within the init code snippet. Please take a look at this doc for the snippet.
  • You can also block or delete these events in our Data product. Deleted events will not show up in your analyses.

Please look here in our Dev Docs for more details. Thank you!  

 

This is great and will mean less manual tracking with tags! Curious to know if it will track Single Page Applications for page url? Guessing not but worth asking. Thanks for the updates!

Awesome. To clarify. is this correct?

  1. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPogPage Domain = document.location.hostname
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  3. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPog Page Path = document.location.pathname
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  5. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPogPage URL = document.location.href

No Page Query (document.location.search) or Page Fragment (document.location.hash)?
Thanks

More questions.

need to manually turn Default Event Tracking off if you prefer to not track these events automatically.

Turn Default Event Tracking off is just for all of them at the same time or can we pick and choose? I may want File Downloaded, Start / End Session but not the rest for example. 

This is great and will mean less manual tracking with tags! Curious to know if it will track Single Page Applications for page url? Guessing not but worth asking. Thanks for the updates!

Hi @mkoiva Yes, page view tracking support single page application too!

Awesome. To clarify. is this correct?

  1. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPogPage Domain = document.location.hostname
  2. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPogPage Location = what exactly?
  3. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPog Page Path = document.location.pathname
  4. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPog Page Title = document.title
  5. 1pGKuam6B6u5In0_RHzgL2UcJLKn1kSCCTY2pZKclxtnKRWX6ErdogBURRAQZFraFK95XPCQxStndsv1oKMCAic_u5aX18FPoJHm60os9mCXDS8JicYyTbbWmZauD7EZ_kkHOF4A5LWwmFEq7OhHPogPage URL = document.location.href

No Page Query (document.location.search) or Page Fragment (document.location.hash)?
Thanks

Hi @Ani Lopez, Page Location is document.location.href and Page URL is document.location.href without query parameters, and the rest are correct.

More questions.

need to manually turn Default Event Tracking off if you prefer to not track these events automatically.

Turn Default Event Tracking off is just for all of them at the same time or can we pick and choose? I may want File Downloaded, Start / End Session but not the rest for example. 

Amplitude allows the option to turn on/off all or pick and choose. You can check this doc for more info and code samples: https://www.docs.developers.amplitude.com/data/sdks/browser-2/#tracking-default-events

No Page Query (document.location.search) or Page Fragment (document.location.hash)?
Thanks

 

So no

  • Page Query (document.location.search)
  • Page Fragment (document.location.hash)

correct?

Would be great.

 

No Page Query (document.location.search) or Page Fragment (document.location.hash)?
Thanks

 

So no

  • Page Query (document.location.search)
  • Page Fragment (document.location.hash)

correct?

Would be great.

 

Hi Ani, page query and page fragment as event properties to page view tracking are not available (at least not yet). This is great feedback, and we will take note of it.

Playing Devil’s Advocate here….would it not be better to have DET defaulted to off rather than on? I totally see why this has been built (a degree of parity with GA4 config so easier for you to mop up some custom there!)…but for existing customers this becomes some additional work to actively turn things off when switching to using the new SDK.

For example….we already do everything that’s in DET via our data layer, so I’m very glad I’ve come across this article to warn me to turn off DET when I put us on the new SDK version. I’m just thinking this might not be the case for everyone and could be easily missed/ caused some problems!

Dan.

Playing Devil’s Advocate here….would it not be better to have DET defaulted to off rather than on? I totally see why this has been built (a degree of parity with GA4 config so easier for you to mop up some custom there!)…but for existing customers this becomes some additional work to actively turn things off when switching to using the new SDK.

For example….we already do everything that’s in DET via our data layer, so I’m very glad I’ve come across this article to warn me to turn off DET when I put us on the new SDK version. I’m just thinking this might not be the case for everyone and could be easily missed/ caused some problems!

Dan.

I can’t agree more with dangrainger. it is fantastic to have new features but how they are delivered is as important as the features themselves.

@dan thanks for the feedback, super helpful. Have you already submitted this to your account team? If not, I’ll go ahead and submit it via our internal channels to raise your point.

Nope, I’ve not mentioned it. It’s a not a massive issue for me personally in that I manage our setup in GTM, so when I update to the new SDK version I can easily turn this off. My point was more for those who aren’t in such a position to do this themselves and those who may not have awareness...for those two pots in particular this certainly feels more like an opt-in feature, not opt-out.

P.S. I do appreciate the irony that if it was opt-in not opt-out, you'd then have something that’s been branded Default Event Tracking which isn’t actually default. Might need a new name 😉

Just to double check - how to disable DET inside of GTM template? 

Can’t find the checkbox currently. Is there something else that needs to be done?

That’s a really good point @mradovan, in the GTM Amplitude template tag dropdown for the “init” call ‘defaultTracking’ isn’t available so we can’t set it to false (similarly there’s no defaultTracking.pageViews, defaultTracking.sessions, etc if only wanting to disable certain elements)…

 

Any suggestions @Esther Trapadoux?

Also, it would be great to add option to add custom event properties with pageView event as well - similar to GA4 option when using data.layer variables.

Just stumbled on this in the Browser SDK documentation, not sure when it happened but it seems Default Event Tracking is now set to “opt-in” rather than “opt-out”. Much better, thanks Amplitude! 
 

 

Is there a way to get rid of the console outpout that the default tracking is activated? This is really annoying to have on a production page.

Is there a way to add back default events to the tracking plan from within the DATA feature once they are removed?

Will these default events be treated as planned or unplanned in an event tracking plan where they are not explicitly added?

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