view online store and not have it count in acquisition reports

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A user runs hourly automated smoke tests that add products to cart and verify checkout functionality. These test sessions are skewing analytics data, showing artificially high ‘added to cart’ metrics (70% after one day).

Current Understanding:

  • Shopify’s eye icon in the admin generates a storefront URL with _uid and _cd query parameters that prevent sessions from counting in acquisition reports
  • Example format: https://mystore.com/?_uid=abc123&_cd=abc123

Key Questions:

  1. Are the _uid and _cd values validated in any way, or can arbitrary values be used?
  2. Can tests simply access the storefront using any values and still avoid tracking?
  3. How long do valid _uid and _cd parameters remain active? Can they be copied once and reused indefinitely in automated tests?
  4. Is there an API endpoint to programmatically generate valid storefront links containing these parameters?

The user seeks a reliable method to exclude automated test traffic from analytics while maintaining regular testing schedules.

Summarized with AI on November 6. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

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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