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An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

plausible.io

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Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#261

Post by LunaSea »

GrinningFool wrote: post #132
londons_explore wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want high quality blog posts, you need to know which ones are popular and bring in new readers. Without that, you'll loose a really strong signal for self improvement, and your blog might become write-only...

I don't see anything in what you said that explains the assumption that a popular post is a high-quality post. Certainly if you're looking to build an audience, then the popularity of your posts is an important metric that will help you craft additional popular posts. But it seems to me that the the only _quality_ indicator isn't a metric at all - it's actual feedback from people who have read what you've written.

I doesn't really matter. The metric is popularity. Period.

You can delve into metrics like the time spent on a page but in the long run popularity is the king since it also reflects dwell time.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#262

Post by carlisle_ »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #220
carlisle_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They’re perfectly up front and obvious about it, not hiding anything. Wtf, this is the opposite of "up front." You had to poke around and figure it out yourself based on a suspicion. Up front means that they just tell you, no figuring out required.

I didn't poke around. I knew by the time I finished reading the Table of Contents, before I even got to the content. Even if they had said in their very first sentence of the content "Disclaimer: We are a competitor to Google Analytics", I would have already known before that. It's blatantly obvious, they didn't need to spoon feed me. This isn't some submarine article. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Your comment reminds me of this: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/28/meta/

>"I am THE ONE. You only need to know me. I am better than all of you."

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#263

Post by LunaSea »

coldpie wrote: post #69
snowwrestler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't care if people are reading your blog, why bother posting it online at all? Why not just blog into a local Word document, like the character Creed on "The Office"? If you do care whether people are reading what you write, then analytics is the obvious way to find out.

I think "analytics" and "traffic stats" are different things.

They are not.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#264

Post by carlisle_ »

lghh wrote: post #234
overeater wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what it is from just reading the link. And even that itself is not upfront -- browsers have been trying to hide the URL for a while now. What if you read it on Google AMP? I agree with the other commenter that this is misleading.

I should have been more clear - reading the content of the link.

You mean at the very end of the article after they finish trashing GA?

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#266

Post by theturtletalks »

ksec wrote: post #118

Plausible, Fathom [1] and Simple Analytics [2] are very similar in features. While self hosting is not supported, plausible is Open Source [3] running on Elixir and Postgre. It is also the most affordable out of three, starting at $6 only. I am not sure why HN are so negative about this post, when two years ago everyone were cheering for GA alternatives. Although I do agree it needs to add "Pricing" in the Navigation…

Fathom is very easy to self-host:

https://render.com/docs/deploy-fathom-analytics

Plausible should provide instructions to self-host for people who want to try it.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#267

Post by shripadk »

dhimes wrote: post #147
shripadk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an option if you are a profit driven enterprise. There is no alternative that is as good/optimized as Google Ads is. You are literally bidding on search intent.

I find that for information search intent is a poor pre-qualifier for sales leads.

Evidence says otherwise. Hard data shows that conversions happen the most through these advertising networks. Can't deny the obvious. Unless you want us all to go back to the pre-Internet era where we cold called clients and vendors with a hope of getting leads. We have technology for a reason. Not all tech is bad. Not all advertising is bad either. It is the intent that matters.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#268

Post by Richs99 »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #130
dkersten wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“From X” doesn’t sound like a flat fee, but either tiered or usage based, where the $6/m is the lowest possible you can pay.

I think if they can just be clear that they will do 10 million impressions per property per month for free forever that would clarify the free tier (and match google I think).

We do over 25m impressions a month and it's still get GA for free

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#269

Post by snowwrestler »

coldpie wrote: post #69
snowwrestler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't care if people are reading your blog, why bother posting it online at all? Why not just blog into a local Word document, like the character Creed on "The Office"? If you do care whether people are reading what you write, then analytics is the obvious way to find out.

I think "analytics" and "traffic stats" are different things.

Traffic stats are a subset of all possible analytics you can gather about a website.

But even if all you want are traffic stats, a client-side analytics package is still a better way to gather that information.

Google Analytics--and similar client-side analytics packages--supplanted server-side log analysis for a reason. It's much easier to implement, and gives you much more accurate counts of real people visiting your site, as opposed to spiders, bots, scripts, and other automated traffic that doesn't matter.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#270

Post by whoisjuan »

ksec wrote: post #118

Plausible, Fathom [1] and Simple Analytics [2] are very similar in features. While self hosting is not supported, plausible is Open Source [3] running on Elixir and Postgre. It is also the most affordable out of three, starting at $6 only. I am not sure why HN are so negative about this post, when two years ago everyone were cheering for GA alternatives. Although I do agree it needs to add "Pricing" in the Navigation…

Perhaps because of the liberal use of the term "Open Source."

This product goes in a long and tedious rant, trying to justify why they are indeed open-source. (https://plausible.io/open-source-website-analytics)

If you need to do all these mental gymnastics to try to convince someone (or yourself) that this is a legit open-source software project, then you are probably not open source.

The only open-source thing about this is that the code is visible in a public repo. That's it. There's no invitation to contribute or requests to open PRs. There's no community of OS contributors, no open discussion about features, and no instructions on how to self-host (and according to their website, an explicit intention to never support or release a genuinely self-hosted distribution).

This is my personal opinion but just because your code is publicly available, that doesn't make it open source. It is at best transparent development tied to a permissive OS license.

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