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How does Zenovay track file downloads on my website?

Zenovay automatically records file downloads when visitors click download links — no code changes required. Here's what gets tracked, where to view it, and how to opt out a specific link.

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Download Tracking records when a visitor downloads a file from your site. The tracking script captures these events automatically as soon as it's installed — no code changes needed, on every plan. To view the data, open your website's dashboard and select the Downloads tab, which is part of the Download Analytics feature on Pro and above.

What counts as a download

Zenovay records a download when a visitor triggers any of the following:

  • A link to a downloadable file — an <a href> whose URL path ends in a recognised extension: pdf, zip, exe, dmg, pkg, msi, apk, csv, xls, xlsx, doc, docx, ppt, pptx, mp4, mp3, wav, mov, avi, rar, 7z, tar, gz, tgz, iso, deb, or rpm.
  • Any <a download> link — regardless of the file extension, if the anchor has the download attribute Zenovay treats it as a file download.
  • A JavaScript-generated (blob) download — when your code creates a temporary blob: URL and triggers a save-as dialog.

Where to see it

Open your website's dashboard and select the Downloads tab (under the Audience group in the sidebar). This view is part of Download Analytics, available on the Pro, Scale, and Enterprise plans. The tab is only visible to signed-in owners and team members — it is not shown on public or shared dashboards, because file paths and names can expose internal paths you might not want to share publicly.

The tab shows:

  • Top downloaded files — a ranked table of files by download count, unique downloaders, file size (where available), and average completion time (where measurable).
  • Downloads over time — an area chart of download volume for the selected date range.
  • Breakdowns — downloads segmented by device type, country, and traffic source.
  • Download completion — a summary of how many downloads were confirmed complete (applies to blob/fetch downloads where timing is measurable, and to browser-managed links that report a size).

Date range and retention

The Downloads tab follows the date range you pick in the dashboard's period selector (Today, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, and so on). How far back you can look is bounded by your plan's data-retention window:

PlanAnalytics data retention
Free1 year
Pro2 years
Scale4 years
EnterpriseCustom

File size and completion time

File size is shown for same-origin downloads (files served from your own domain). For cross-origin files (hosted on a CDN or a third-party domain), the size is available only when the file server includes permissive CORS headers — otherwise the column shows "-".

Completion time is measurable only for blob and fetch-triggered downloads, where the browser hands the transfer to JavaScript and Zenovay can observe when it finishes. For ordinary <a href> file links, the browser manages the transfer entirely in its own download manager and there is no way to intercept the completion signal — the completion time column shows "-" for those rows. This is expected behaviour, not a tracking gap.

If you have a link that matches the download criteria but you do not want it tracked, add the data-download attribute to the anchor:

<a href="/files/report.pdf" data-download>Download report (not tracked)</a>

Zenovay suppresses tracking for any <a> element that carries the data-download attribute.

Browser compatibility

Download Tracking works in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Privacy

Download Tracking uses the same tracker that is already on your page — it does not introduce new cookies or use localStorage. It works in cookieless mode, where window-scoped in-memory identifiers are used instead of persistent storage. Visitors who send a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal are not tracked by design, so their downloads will not appear in the tab.

How to test it

  1. Open a page on your site that contains a downloadable file link.
  2. Click the link to trigger a download.
  3. Sign in to app.zenovay.com, open that website's dashboard, and select the Downloads tab.

The download should appear within a few seconds. If you don't see it, confirm that the tracking script is installed and that the link matches one of the file extensions or attributes listed above.

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