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How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

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Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#151

Post by fwn »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #116
darepublic wrote: post #61

would it be naive to say that sites can get around the blockers by proxying their analytics through their own domain? Isn't the lazy way of sending everything directly to ga from the client the cause here -- and any thoughtful site owner should be able to circumvent this if they truly care to?

ssshhhhh. Don't give people ideas

That's actually (as far as I understood) something ublock origin seems to address in one of their most recent updates. See 1.25.0 release description:

> From now on uBO will CNAME-uncloak network requests.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#152

Post by perlpimp »

cl0rkster wrote: post #147
saagarjha wrote: post #3

One of the corollaries to this is that if you are basing your decisions on analytics, you are probably under-representing people who block them, who often tend to be a non-representative subset of your users. I have seen multiple projects do things like stop supporting features that their analytics “showed nobody was using” but failed to realize that a significant portion of their (often technical and very vocal) use…

I don't understand why first-party analytics and JavaScript aren't more popular, but I suppose it's a matter of cost in the serverless and freemium world. But for VC stuff... There are plenty of pre-built analytics kits out there that can run from your site and you would have none of these problems.

Is there something that will integrate with nginx or rails ? I am having hard time finding these.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#153

Post by system2 »

microtonal wrote: post #131
zuppy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s you who requests those resources, nobody pushes that data towards you. Are we debating adblockers? Because that is a different topic than server side log analysis and I agree that we should be picky about what we process (but it’s a thin line, you are using resources from the owner of that service though).

It’s you who requests those resources, That does not matter, at least in the EU where citizens are protected by the GDPR. Article 6 of the GDPR: Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;

You are changing directions with your comment.

"his or her personal data"

Analytics is not personal. No one shares their names or social security number. And I strongly agree with people above mentioning The Visitor is the requester. We provide services, they use it, we want to understand what we are doing by checking analytics. Nothing immoral about this.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#154

Post by jrockway »

jedieaston wrote: post #120
jrockway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 telemetry is pretty scary. I used to do the Windows Insider program, but noticed that they want to collect every website you visit, which seemed a little much to me. Now every week or so Windows complains that I'm not getting insider builds anymore and asks me to reenable the telemetry. The hilarious thing is that I still am getting those builds; when my computer "blue screens" it's green and claims to be…

What's your build number? You may still be on an Insider build and since a new "stable" build hasn't been released, Windows had nothing to upgrade to.

18363.657

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#155

Post by system2 »

twhb wrote: post #28

Note that the 0% for Android is because Google banned ad blockers on the Play Store.

I am certain many jailbroken androids are out there using adblockers. Firefox also has plugins internally blocking ads.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/adblock-plus/

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#156

Post by stedaniels »

perlpimp wrote: post #152
cl0rkster wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why first-party analytics and JavaScript aren't more popular, but I suppose it's a matter of cost in the serverless and freemium world. But for VC stuff... There are plenty of pre-built analytics kits out there that can run from your site and you would have none of these problems.

Is there something that will integrate with nginx or rails ? I am having hard time finding these.

Matomo can easily share nginx with whatever site you are running. It's PHP/MySQL, which these days for a low impact site, will run perfectly well out of the box, no running required.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#158

Post by matijsvzuijlen »

microtonal wrote: post #131
zuppy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s you who requests those resources, nobody pushes that data towards you. Are we debating adblockers? Because that is a different topic than server side log analysis and I agree that we should be picky about what we process (but it’s a thin line, you are using resources from the owner of that service though).

It’s you who requests those resources, That does not matter, at least in the EU where citizens are protected by the GDPR. Article 6 of the GDPR: Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;

Item (f) in that same Article 6 can be applied to collect data without explicit consent:

(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#159

Post by PavlovsCat »

going_to_800 wrote: post #56

It's from 2017 but even more valid today. GA is blocked by most ad blockers thus no company can rely confidently on it anymore. uBlock blocks also a few other tools like MixPanel that helps companies understand their users behavior and how they use their product. I can't believe how ignorant people that say "use server logs" are. They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business, yet they want…

> yet they want better and cheaper products - even free if possible.

I want good things, I have them, and now I want greedy, needy people to stop pushing their mediocre, poorly understood imitations to drown out the really good things we might use and nurture instead, hurting us all and even themselves in the process.

> How do you think a company gets to improve and optimize their product? By surveys?

If what you make serves a purpose other than generating needs to make a profit from, then you'll probably be fine with mostly simply paying attention to what you're making, using it yourself, and occasionally making surveys and collecting metrics from volunteers to see if there's anything you missed.

Re: How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

#160

Post by system2 »

mobjack wrote: post #74
going_to_800 wrote: post #56

It's from 2017 but even more valid today. GA is blocked by most ad blockers thus no company can rely confidently on it anymore. uBlock blocks also a few other tools like MixPanel that helps companies understand their users behavior and how they use their product. I can't believe how ignorant people that say "use server logs" are. They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business, yet they want…

It isn't that hard to get around ad blockers for doing analytics. You can hide third party tools behind a proxy for example or write your own custom tracking software.

Oh yes, you can explain that to the advertising agencies which mostly run Google Ads for clients. Google ads need google analytics 100%. Any online marketing will go thru GTM (google tag manager). They are dominant, a monopoly.

YC news tech gurus will come up with all sorts of geeky server side solutions but people need to accept Google Ads is a must for most companies out there, and one will use google analytics one way or another. No escape.

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