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How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

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

#161

Post by microtonal »

system2 wrote: post #153
microtonal wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don’t get to redefine ‘personal data’ ;). The GDPR is clear about that:

* ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;*

In the legal opinions that the EU provides with the GDPR, random tokens that are associated with a person are PD. An IP address is also considered personal data:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

Nothing immoral about this.

What is ethical is a personal opinion, but collecting personal data (following the definition above) is simply not legal without consent in the EU.

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

#162

Post by stedaniels »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #108
cgriswald wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How I use a software is not an indication of how I want to use a software. It’s what I’m doing with the options the software has given. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be like everyone else, and an inefficiency in the software will be spotted and fixed so the software will be slightly easier to use. In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own; and even if other users…

It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh. > In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things…

Analytics driven development is like flying a plane on instruments only with all the windows covered up. I mean, sure, you'll get there, but compared to flying normally you are missing out on so much.

Watching individual user sessions from session recordings provides more depth, but you are still missing out on great swathes of information.

Analytics and session recordings don't give anything near as much concrete data as taking the time to engage with your users. You then use analytics to confirm behaviour.

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

#163

Post by system2 »

saagarjha wrote: post #137
going_to_800 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Analytics spies you? Lol. Those tools that you use daily on the browser that saves you time and makes your life easier got to that point because they had a way to learn how they were used. Seems that you don't make a difference between ad related tracking and product based tracking.

> Those tools that you use daily on the browser that saves you time and makes your life easier got to that point because they had a way to learn how they were used. As far as I am aware, Hacker News has never used Google Analytics.

Or the ones commenting never used. I am certain many people read, chuckle and don't bother explaining. Any small/medium size company running an e-commerce platform will be using Google products, including GTM, analytics, ads, youtube ads.

It is impossible not to use it at this point. If you don't use it, you will be forced to add it for another 3rd party working with you or with your client.

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

#164

Post by pachico »

I have started some weeks ago this project: https://github.com/iris-analytics It's a small JS that gathers data and sends it to a Go backend to then be stored in ClickHouse. Although there's lots to do, we use it in production successfully. Remember ClickHouse was born precisely for web analytics where a single instance can handle hundreds of millions of inserts per day with no effort. I did this because stats say adblocker penetration in Europe is beyond 30% and this would give us real time insights with no sampling and ad-hoc queries.

If you want to help me out, you are very welcome!!!

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

#165

Post by AmericanChopper »

linza wrote: post #148
AmericanChopper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh. > In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things…

I haven't worked on a product that used analytics to drive feature development. What you wrote here sounds very naive to me. I might be completely wrong, but i assume if you have a large enough user base you would use telemetry only in an aggregated way, and then prioritize the majority of the user base. So I might totally be underrepresented but still have the same loss of privacy as everyone else. I also feel i alw…

What I have written here is based 100% on working with product teams who use analytics very competently to influence feature development (which is almost never driven by one single factor).

> I might be completely wrong, but i assume if you have a large enough user base you would use telemetry only in an aggregated way, and then prioritize the majority of the user base.

In some cases yes, but you need to get that aggregate data from somewhere. It’s also naive (and probably a bit arrogant) to assume that your requirements aren’t in fact well aligned with the majority of the user base.

This is however a somewhat immature way of using analytics data. There’s plenty of incredibly valuable data you can get from peculiar and unpredicted usage patterns. Any product manager will tell you that most customers are quite bad at expressing what they actually want. A good product manager can gather a fair amount of insight from what they choose to complain about, but analysing the most immediately obvious trends really only gets you so far. You’ll often get the most insight from the rare customers who are able to concisely articulate their feedback, and those that are frustrated and ingenuitive enough to subvert your application to their will.

For any motivated organisation, there’s countless ways to get insight out of their analytics. You’ve just described the lowest hanging fruit.

> I also feel i always have the right to complain about a product

Depending on where you live, you likely have the right to complain about anything you like. But if you want to prevent an organisation from analysing your usage of their service, then complaining about them not meeting the needs of your use case is hypocritical.

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

#166

Post by AmericanChopper »

stedaniels wrote: post #162
AmericanChopper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh. > In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things…

Analytics driven development is like flying a plane on instruments only with all the windows covered up. I mean, sure, you'll get there, but compared to flying normally you are missing out on so much. Watching individual user sessions from session recordings provides more depth, but you are still missing out on great swathes of information. Analytics and session recordings don't give anything near as much concrete da…

Analytics driven development is a strawman. It’s simply one of many factors that can influence development decisions. Depending on the particular circumstances, it may be incredibly valuable, or not valuable at all.

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

#167

Post by einpoklum »

pachico wrote: post #164

I have started some weeks ago this project: https://github.com/iris-analytics It's a small JS that gathers data and sends it to a Go backend to then be stored in ClickHouse. Although there's lots to do, we use it in production successfully. Remember ClickHouse was born precisely for web analytics where a single instance can handle hundreds of millions of inserts per day with no effort. I did this because stats say ad…

Perhaps you should post it on "Show HN".

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

#168

Post by Narkov »

Ayesh wrote: post #24
Narkov wrote: post #16

Does this take into account bots and other non-human stuff GA might block? Server logs and GA are measuring different things.

I don't think there is an effective way to distinguish bots from real users when a UA is faking what it is. IP filtering or other measures can help, but you ultimately rely on the UA strong from the UA.

That's true for the server logs but GA has access to much more information to make a decision like that. My point is that comparing server logs to GA results is invalid.

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

#169

Post by kludgekraft »

system2 wrote: post #155
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/

Please take a look at Blokada: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/

You'll have to get it from the F-Droid app store, but this doesn't require a rooted phone. It uses a local VPN to block ads at the network level, hence no ads in your apps as well

I've been using this for a month and it works wonderfully

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

#170

Post by stestagg »

o-__-o wrote: post #123
mokus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you just load that when they click it?

1 9 9 5

Back in 1995 all websites shared one global stylesheet.

Every time a new rule was added, you had to wait up to 24 hours for the css servers to propagate.

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