Why am I seeing single letters in analytics?

Typically when we see single letters in analytics it is because not all users are assigned a unique userToken. This is most common with back end search implementations. If you're using a backend search, there are two ways to assign a unique identifier for your users:

• Set the X-Algolia-UserToken header to forward a user ID, or use the userToken parameter. The analytics engine uses this token to perform query aggregation and compute the user count.
• Set the X-Forwarded-For header to forward the users’ IP address. The analytics engine uses this IP as the userToken if you don’t provide one. The users’ IP address is also required for geolocation to work.

Otherwise the presence of single letters in the analytics can be due to the users typing in queries with just 2 letters, then they are immediately seeing the result they want straight away and are clicking on it.