How many users block Google analytics? (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by iforgotpassword » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

ozi wrote: post #34

thanhhaimai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I turned off my Windows 10 Telemetry, I expressed a clear choice that I'd rather not give my data, and it's fine for my voice to not be heard. I just really don't care about Windows 10 that much. On the other hand, I turned on all the telemetry for OctoPi, Steam, and a bunch of other softwares I care about. I want my voice to be heard for those cases. Just curious, what's so inexcusable about that?

Yeah, exactly. "Inexcusable" seems a bit extreme. Are you suggesting companies spend 10x on manual user research? Are you willing to pay more for a product because of increased costs to understand what users actually want?

> Are you suggesting companies spend 10x on manual user research?

if they want to make their product better, that's what they should do, instead of drawing wrong conclusions from the limited data that telemetry gives you.

> Are you willing to pay more for a product because of increased costs to understand what users actually want?

It's your business. Add telemetry, have it turned off by a significant amount of your users which might not be an average representation of your user base.

So your go ahead and optimize for a biased subset, maybe even interpret some of that data wrong, and before you know it, for iterations later some fancy startup is stealing the show, because they simply read all the detailed complaints about your software on reddit and HN instead of jacking off to analytics data.

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

#222

Post by aembleton » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

ronyfadel wrote: post #89

Is there a free server-side analytics service that’s not a pain to set up? I’m using Netlify, but enabling analytics is 9$/site/month, so I tell myself that GA is just fine.

Cloudflare if you want basic analytics.

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

#223

Post by matz1 » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #219

matz1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not charity, I allow them to collect my data so that they can use it to improve the service.

Then you are being charitable.

No since I'm not giving my data for free. I expect service improvement as a return.

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

#224

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #218

vezycash wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cases where your DOCUMENT is uploaded to Microsoft. Much clearer.

I haven't heard of this, do you have any references?

It’s hard to find now with O365, but the process that reported bugs to Microsoft post crash would always do it by default.

It’s not as big of a deal now that most users upload everything anyway.

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

#225

Post by CivBase » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #223

CivBase wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are being charitable.

No since I'm not giving my data for free. I expect service improvement as a return.

You're already paying for the service. The service improves because the business providing it has to stay competitive to keep getting payed.

A business is not obligated to improve a service just because you donated your telemetry data.

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

#226

Post by pachico » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

I find it quite surprising how many companies don't invest enough in having a certain maturity in terms of web analytics, despite they heavily invested in CRM, machine learning and other fields. Ad-blockers are still not considered a fact in data gathering nor in QA or, in the best case, just a minor singularity. Despite different sources agree on a +30% of usage, at least in Europe, they're still ignored. Still many business decisions are based on solutions like GA. If decisions were to be taken on any other source, let's say polls, marketing studies, etc., after being warned of a 30% of uncertainty, people would be very reluctant to choose A over B. This is not the case for web analytics, it seems. Now technology has evolved and any medium size company should harvest their own data (yes, stop giving away some of your most valuable data to third parties, please!).

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

#227

Post by epidemian » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #128

epidemian wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you would expect for Chrome to show a higher number of GA blocking "users". But that's not the case: the article mentions that the percentage of users blocking GA on Chrome is on par with Safari. And I don't know what you mean by "serious". The most common crawlers (Google, Baidu, Yandex, etc) identify themselves as bots on the User-Agent very clearly. Personally, those are the ones that I'd call the most "serio…

I meant bots with sufficiently sophisticated adversarial motives (ad fraud? blog comment spam? automated wordpress exploitation?), who I'd expect want to avoid being recognized as such.

Ah, I see what you mean. Those are serious-ly malicious bots then! But yeah, completely agreed; those can be a PITA on sites with user-generated content.

But, is your experience that these kinds of bots cause much traffic? Because, from what I've seen, they can make a mess with fake accounts, fake content, fake clicks, etc, but as far as traffic goes, they were completely dwarfed by search engine crawlers and real users' traffic.

Thanks for the clarification :D

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

#228

Post by zelphirkalt » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #105

mobjack wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then create a custom endpoint that records those client side interactions in a database.

So... client side analytics? Like Google Analytics?

Obviously not a third party like Google, especially not Google.

Inform your users honestly and do not hide things. Make promises about tracking data usage and stick to them. Tell them the truth and give them a choice. Stop acting like you got something to hide and do your tracking yourself.

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

#229

Post by matz1 » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #225

matz1 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No since I'm not giving my data for free. I expect service improvement as a return.

You're already paying for the service. The service improves because the business providing it has to stay competitive to keep getting payed. A business is not obligated to improve a service just because you donated your telemetry data.

Yes and in addition I also pay with my data. I didn't simply donate my data. I expect the company to use my data and my money to improve the service. Even with money, the company is not obligated to improve service just because you pay.

If they stop improving, I'll stop paying them as well as stop giving them my data.

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

#230

Post by Nextgrid » Sun, Mar 01, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

going_to_800 wrote: post #201

Nextgrid wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They clearly haven't done any online marketing or run an online business As far as I'm concerned online marketing is cancer. It acts against me, wastes my time, etc. Marketing should be about presenting your product in the best light possible, and stop there . You shouldn't be allowed to track or waste other people's time to promote your product - being in business is not a right after all. > How do you think a com…

I really hope one day you start your own online business and see how it's actually run. It's one thing you imagine a business should be run in an utopian world where people respond to surveys and know exactly what they need to solve their issues (Henry Ford said it perfectly "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses") and another thing how it works in real world. > Yes exactly - comp…

> This is a very ignorant response so I assume all your answers are the same.

If that is ignorant then I guess most companies founded in the 20th century (without analytics, stalking and targeted advertising) must not be real then? In fact I'd argue most of the money that funds the cancer that is modern advertising, marketing, etc was made before such things were actually invented.

> I think you meant "advertising"

I kind of agree, and this is why I clarified my definition of marketing. For me, marketing is about putting your product in the best light possible on your website (or physical space if you're into retail), so that people who stumble upon your product (randomly or by searching for it) will be encouraged to buy it.

The modern definition of marketing however seems to be stalking (aka analytics), spam (newsletters, push notifications), creepy targeted advertising (often relying on the previous items) and so on, essentially forcing your product onto people who haven't asked anything. I consider this modern marketing to be cancer.