This page contains frequently-asked questions about the Signals Beacon.

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Does the beacon impact site performance or load times?

The Signals Beacon is designed to be lightweight and efficient. It uses a lazy loading technique to minimize the impact on page load times and overall site performance. The beacon scripts are served from Google Cloud Storage, which ensures fast loading with minimal overhead.

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What events does the Signals Beacon track?

The Signals Beacon transmits the URLs of visited pages, actions taken on those pages, and the results of those actions. For example, when a user performs a search, the beacon captures the list of displayed products and subsequent interactions such as clicks, cart adds, or purchases. The following signals are collected:
  • Query signals. When a user performs a search, a signal is recorded.
  • Click signals. When a user clicks on a product, a signal is recorded. One example of a click signal is when a user clicks a search result, which is a strong indicator the result is relevant.
  • Cart-add signals. When a user clicks to add an item to the cart, a signal is recorded.
  • Purchase signals. When a user clicks to purchase the items in the cart, a signal is recorded.
  • Facet usage signals. When a user interacts with the facets associated with the results, a signal is recorded.

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How do I customize the beacon to track specific user actions?

By default, the Signals Beacon tracks visitor, session, query, and cart IDs. You can customize which IDs the beacon tracks by editing the JSON configuration.

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Can I send signals directly to Analytics Studio without using the Signals Beacon?

Yes, by using the Signals API.

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Does the Signals Beacon track users between devices?

No, the user is tracked in the browser’s local storage and is tracked anonymously (no personally identified information, like name or address).

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If I have multiple websites, do I need to create multiple beacons?

Yes, you need to create a separate Signals Beacon for each website. Each website’s beacon has its own signals store and dashboard.

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How does the beacon handle user privacy and data security?

The Signals Beacon does not use cookies and only captures anonymized session data to respect user privacy. IP addresses are anonymized by dropping the last octet, ensuring no precise user location or personal data is stored. For more information, see Lucidworks Signals Beacon Privacy and Security policies and GDPR Compliance policy

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Can the Signals Beacon replace indexing signals in Fusion?

You can use the Signals Beacon in addition to or instead of indexing signals in Fusion.

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Can I use the Signals Beacon in a self-hosted, non-SaaS deployment?

Yes, the Signals Beacon is part of a standalone SaaS offering that captures and sends signals to the Lucidworks Signals Store.

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Does bot traffic affect my signals data?

No, the Signals Beacon automatically identifies and blocks a list of Google’s cralwer IP addresses to ensure your signals data is accurate. This prevents bot traffic from triggering the Signals Beacon on your website and skewing your analytics.