Frequently Asked Questions

Get answers to commonly asked questions about Request Metrics, integrations, web performance, and troubleshooting.

Do You Store Any User Identifying Information?
Why doesn’t my data match my other analytics tools?
Why does my performance look different than my Google Lighthouse report?
Can I use Google Tag Manager or Segment?
Can Request Metrics Monitor Web Workers?
I Have More Questions!

Do You Store Any User Identifying Information?

Nope. Not by default anyway. Our agent obfuscates user interactions, doesn’t drop any cookies, and throws away IP addresses. However, if you provide additional end user data, such as identify your users, custom events, or metadata, there may be regulatory implications to this.

Why doesn’t my data match my other analytics tools?

Request Metrics attempts to filter out traffic from known robots and garbage data that doesn’t reflect your real users. Other analytics tools may not filter out the same traffic that we do. This will result in slightly different counts.

Additionally, the end users themselves may be blocking some traffic with an ad blocker or proxy. You can get better data about these users by configuring domain forwarding.

If you think there we are missing some data from your users, contact us and we’ll look into it.

Why does my performance look different than my Google Lighthouse report?

A Google Lighthouse report is a “synthetic” report that only shows how your website loaded for you and only one time. It usually represents the “best case” for your performance. Real users might see your site as fast as you, but usually it will be some degree slower due to network congestion, geographic limits, and the variability of your systems.

Check out our blog on this topic, “The Limitations of Lighthouse”.

Can I use Google Tag Manager or Segment?

Yes, but it’s probably not a good idea. Tag managers will load the Request Metrics agent asynchronously, which means you may run into issues sending events or identifying users if the tag hasn’t loaded yet. Request Metrics will not be able to detect any errors or user actions until we are loaded, so this creates a pretty big blind spot in your data.

Can Request Metrics Monitor Web Workers?

Yes! The agent will work inside web worker context to monitor activity, errors, performance, and security. Check out the web worker installation docs.