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Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

simpleanalytics.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#251

Post by joshyi »

ValentineC wrote: post #55
sondr3 wrote: post #17

I've moved away from using any kind of script embedded in my webpages for tracking and instead just use Goaccess ( https://goaccess.io/ ) to analyze my logs. Though there are obvious caveats with this, you need to install it, configure the server logging to match it and so on. But personally the benefits outweighs the cons, it all runs on the server, you are the sole owner off all the data and this tracking doesn't r…

From what Simple Analytics says they collect on their website, it sounds like the only information missing from GoAccess (or server logs in general) is screen width.

I'm able to get the screen size with goaccess. I placed a bogus in the document. e.g.,

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#253

Post by Findus23 »

jackgolding wrote: post #217

Hi I work in digital analytics and have a question. A problem with Piwik is if that PSQL database goes down (a database is NEVER 100% up) what happens to the data your JavaScript snippet is sending? Will also add a lot of comments here are very unfair I hope you take them with a grain of salt.

Just FYI: With Piwik/Matomo you can replay your access.log and therefore never miss any data even if the instance goes down completely: https://matomo.org/faq/log-analytics-tool/faq_19221/

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#254

Post by tomaskafka »

ucarion wrote: post #123
AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

First off: hats off for making a product that takes the rights of the end user seriously! However, I am a bit confused as to who would want this product. The sort of questions this product answers seem quite limited: 1. What URLs are getting lots of hits? 2. What referrers are generating lots of hits? 3. What screen sizes are those hits coming from? What decisions can be drawn from those questions? This seems useful…

Here's a gdpr compliant system that answers complex questions. Hint: if your content is worthy, a part of readers will agree to reasonable analytics, and you can extrapolate from this.

https://www.baekdal.com/thoughts/inside-story-what-i-did-to-...

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#255

Post by tomaskafka »

clpwn wrote: post #42
sondr3 wrote: post #17

I've moved away from using any kind of script embedded in my webpages for tracking and instead just use Goaccess ( https://goaccess.io/ ) to analyze my logs. Though there are obvious caveats with this, you need to install it, configure the server logging to match it and so on. But personally the benefits outweighs the cons, it all runs on the server, you are the sole owner off all the data and this tracking doesn't r…

Not to mention GoAccess is often more accurate since many visitors use extensions which block 3rd party trackers.

On the other side, server side logs show bots, and for some verticals that's massively bigger traffic than real people.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#256

Post by johnnycarcin »

darekkay wrote: post #191
johnnycarcin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I LOVE Goaccess and highly recommend it as well. My single complaint is the lack of ability to filter/define a date and time range. I know there is an issue for it but last time I checked it had been open for quite some time :(.

There's a kind of a workaround. I rotate my logs with logrotate weekly, so the current week's logs are in access.log (and access.log.1) and past logs are in access.log.x.gz files. Then I run goaccess twice (once for .log and once .gz) to get both "all" and "latest" stats. It's not as flexible as a real filter, but it works for me.

Just curious ,are you using the web based UI to look at your data or the CLI? I use the web UI so I'm wondering how something like this might work with that. I'll have to poke around. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#257

Post by curun1r »

epicmuffin wrote: post #223
curun1r wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh...I had the opposite reaction to the price. As someone building something in the analytics space, $12/mo seems so low that it won't get traction beyond the hobbyist demographic. If you want to sell to business, the price point needs to be at least $200/mo. Plus, I have zero confidence that someone using a naive postgres implementation can scale an analytics backend with customers paying only $12/mo unless all tho…

How do you know the postgres implementation is naive? I've worked on several analytics platforms...including offshoots of google analytics within Google itself, and this problem domain is ridiculously easy to shard on natural partitions. And after sharding, you can start to do roll-ups, which Google Analytics does internally. By 2014 when I left, we had a few petabytes of analytics data for a very small but high traf…

There's a comment elsewhere in this thread where he talks about his backend. He didn't explicitly say it was naive, but he definitely gave off that vibe. Is it possible to use postgres in a sophisticated way to work as an analytics store? Sure...Timescale does it and gives you the majority of what you'd need. But it's hard to get right and the creator hasn't given the impression that he's well-versed in this space.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#258

Post by shermozle »

dylz wrote: post #96
AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

How can I run this myself? It absolutely isn't privacy-first if it requires running on someone else's machine and giving your users' data to them - another issue would be that while your server is in the EU, the hosting company is subject to US law, and all the stuff that comes with it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act f.e.)

Try Snowplow if you want to run it yourself.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#259

Post by jackgolding »

Findus23 wrote: post #253
jackgolding wrote: post #217

Hi I work in digital analytics and have a question. A problem with Piwik is if that PSQL database goes down (a database is NEVER 100% up) what happens to the data your JavaScript snippet is sending? Will also add a lot of comments here are very unfair I hope you take them with a grain of salt.

Just FYI: With Piwik/Matomo you can replay your access.log and therefore never miss any data even if the instance goes down completely: https://matomo.org/faq/log-analytics-tool/faq_19221/

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#260

Post by ValentineC »

joshyi wrote: post #251
ValentineC wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what Simple Analytics says they collect on their website, it sounds like the only information missing from GoAccess (or server logs in general) is screen width.

I'm able to get the screen size with goaccess. I placed a bogus in the document. e.g.,

That's a nice idea, but it requires wrapping script tags around the "pixel", right?
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