view online store and not have it count in acquisition reports

view online store and not have it count in acquisition reports

PetsCalmDown
Tourist
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I have an hourly automated test that adds products to the basket and confirms checkout can be reached.

 

This is called smoke testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_testing_(software)

 

I want to prevent these sessions affecting analytics, because after a day of this running I had 'added to cart': 70%!

 

I see from docs:

 

If you want to view your online store and not have it count as a session in your acquisition reports, then on your desktop Shopify admin, click the eye icon to open your store. Any other method of viewing your online store on desktop counts as a session in your reports.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/reports-and-analytics/shopify-reports/overview-dashboard

 

The eye icon gives a url containing querystring params _uid and _cd e.g., https://mystore.com/?_uid=abc123&_cd=abc123

 

Questions:

  1. are _uid and _cd values validated in any way? Can my tests simply access the storefront using arbitrary values and still it not track?
  2. If not, how long does a _cd and a _uid stay valid e.g, can I copy valid ones and use them in the tests indefinitely
  3. If not, is there an API endpoint to generate a storefront link containing valud _cd and _uid values
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