Event Category/Action/Label

Category / action / label is an older event-naming pattern that describes each event with three strings: a category (group), an action (the kind of interaction) and an optional label (detail).

This three-part structure is a legacy of the previous generation of web analytics, built to arrange events in three hierarchical levels; for example category video, action play, label clip-name. Its serious limit is having only three slots into which everything must fit, so teams end up cramming information into the label and reports become cluttered and inconsistent. The newer, event-based generation dropped this model in favor of one event name plus any number of arbitrary properties, which is more flexible and keeps information structured. Knowing this pattern still matters, because migrating from an old tool to a new one requires translating this triple into the event-name-plus-property model, or history is lost.