The service list is built from service identities present in received spans. Use stable, meaningful names so the same logical service does not appear as several entries.

Maintain service identity

• Assign one stable service name per deployable service.
• Use a separate environment or deployment attribute instead of adding ephemeral values to the service name.
• Keep resource attributes consistent across replicas.
• Review operation names for unbounded identifiers such as user IDs or raw URLs.

To retire a service, stop its exporters and remove obsolete configuration from the deployment. Its historical traces remain searchable until retention expires. A service that disappears unexpectedly may have stopped receiving traffic, changed identity, lost export connectivity, or moved outside the selected time range.