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How many users block Google analytics? (2017)

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

#231
I actually noticed this when testing what kind of users Facebook ads brought to my site. The numbers from Google Analytics didn't seem to match the number of clicks reported by Facebook.

As a side note, those users were useless anyway as all of them were bots: https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/4smisl/facebook_...

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

#232
post #6

What's interesting to me about the number of people who block Google analytics, is the number of people working with those analytics in product management, marketing or SEO, that are apparently unaware of anyone being able to block Google Analytics.

I think very few people who block Google Analytics are actually aware that they do it. They install an adblock to block annoying ads and enable privacy options to block scary trackers because they read somewhere that if they don’t do it they can be hacked and have their nudes leaked. Those are stuff done by shady companies and bad guys. Google is not one of those, it’s a respectable company. Only paranoid nerds who use that weird duck site go out of their way to block Google.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> sure, you'll get there Hum... On real life you would quickly discover how vulnerable all of your instruments are sensitive to both random and bad-intended interference. You can apply the same phrase as a metaphor for software.

> Hum... On real life you would quickly discover how vulnerable all of your instruments are sensitive to both random and bad-intended interference.

Well no, commercial pilots have to be rated IFR. Flying via instruments only is completely normal and part of the training. Visual is perhaps easier for many people, but you lose the use of visual navigation in all kinds of circumstances, like at night, over the ocean, or in a storm.

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

#234
post #53
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War story: we turned off the “print” button on MSN because it was unused. Users in Japan complained - they were printing articles to read on the train. Turned it back on in that geo

What year was this?

2007? 2008?

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

#235

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…

> It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh

Please don't cross into personal attack. You don't need to, it poisons discussion, and it evokes worse from others. Your post would be fine without that bit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Mhm, we have a bunch of non-crawled content that sees a significant minority of request volume from disguised bots. Overall, it is definitely dwarfed by traffic from real users, but it still forces a lot of work to prevent the bots from gaming metrics/analytics.

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

#238
I refuse to implement client-side analytics; for one thing, it is a waste of bandwidth, and for the other thing, it is not how software should be designed, and for the other other thing, it is unethical.

I do log some stuff sent to the server, as well as some stuff about the response (such as the HTTP status code, data size, timing, etc), although I do not sell this data to anyone else, and this logged data is reduced further if the client sends a "DNT:1" header.

But decisions about how to make something would normally be based on actual comments by the users, rather than analytics, I should think.

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

#239
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Root users like myself use tools like AdAway to managing hosts blocking. This will help cover a lot of ads in apps as well. You also have alternative WebView implementations like Bromite (although I wish it were easier to install and worked on Android 10) that can give you ad blocking in apps using web views too. This is also missing the part where you can run Android without the Play Store using microG and F-Droid +…

You don't even need root, you can have an ad blocker as VPN (AdGuard, Blokada).

True! Do those work while simultaneously actually using a VPN?
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