Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#311

Post by Carpetsmoker » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 8:23 AM UTC

xrd wrote: post #202

Has anyone used any of these with a proxy to avoid ad blocker blocking? What I mean is, I installed matomo and then saw my ad blocker blocked it. Is there a way to make any of these work by proxying through the same domain as the site, so those analytics requests look just like all other ajax requests? I was surprised matomo wasn't listed here. Does anyone know if that was intentional? Seems like it fits the criteria…

> I was surprised matomo wasn't listed here. Does anyone know if that was intentional? Seems like it fits the criteria of the post and the goals of open source.

Yes, this was intentional as this article was focused on "light-weight" analytics. I think they'll do an article about Matomo at some point in the future as well.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#312

Post by Carpetsmoker » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 8:27 AM UTC

m90 wrote: post #253

franky47 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, I'm not using the DNT header though, because of the encryption, I need to know about DNT before the analytics data is even sent. I use navigator.doNotTrack, and where it's set I only encrypt and send a minimal visit count event.

I tried to do the exact same thing and had to stop considering DNT as it would essentially collect Chrome only back then. Good thing they have reverted this I guess. DNT makes a lot of sense as a concept still.

IMO it's pretty much useless (and possibly even harmful) and a failed experiment. GoatCounter intentionally ignores it. Context: https://www.arp242.net/dnt.html

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#313

Post by justinclift » Sun, Jun 21, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #307

justinclift wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fathom started out with much fanfare as being Open Source, but as soon as their paid service gained enough traction they went proprietary only. Can't recommend a company which pulls crap like that. :(

Note that Fanthom had a change of ownership, and that the original author doesn't seem entirely happy with the change of direction either.

Ahhh. I thought the original owner sold the project, but didn't realise they didn't have further involvement.

Is that info about the original author being unhappy somewhere public?

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#314

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 3:36 AM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #273

JackWritesCode wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server side logs aren’t an accurate way of doing analytics and bring up compliance challenges (storing access logs and using them for purposes other than security etc.)

> Server side logs aren’t an accurate way of doing analytics ... Based on what? Server side logs records what the server itself sent. That sounds like it should offer far more accuracy than what a JS only solution would do. That being said, if the code for analysing the server logs is lousy, it's not going to help. :)

The identifier in server logs is IP address, which is useless for distinguishing users. On the corporate side, NAT hides all the visits of many people behind a single IP. On the consumer side, ISPs change IP addresses all the time so a single person will show up as multiple IP addresses.

Note that I'm just talking about distinguishing people, not identifying or tracking. A basic question like "how many people came to my website today" is more accurately answered with client-side analytics than by analyzing web server logs.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#315

Post by JackWritesCode » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #308

JackWritesCode wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are 2 indie developers trying to build a sustainable business. We are trying to compete against Google. The idea that the open-source package is responsible for our success is ludicrous. Our success came from thousands of hours of work. You’ll believe the narrative you choose. You’re entitled to that. We will always be “liars” to you because we chose to spend our time building up the paid service. You feel like we…

I think the biggest peeve people have isn't so much that Fathom v2/PRO is closed source, but rather the "we'll open source it soon" kind of "dangling the carrot" stuff. In the GitHub issue you mentioned "since people are confused [..]", but people are confused because your communication has quite frankly not been very good. Even today just looking at the Fathom README it's not at all clear that Fathom v2 (or "PRO") i…

We're going to make our stance clear with our next release of Lite. We definitely made some mistakes with regards to V2. Originally we had planned to open-source it, but then we decided against it.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#316

Post by cpuguy83 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #310

cpuguy83 wrote: post #163

Maybe stop spying on people? EU be like you have to put up this banner to tell them you are spying... it super annoying and everyone hates it... and you be like "sure, I love me some spying".

Counting how many people come in to your store and how many of them actually but something is not "spying".

You also don't need client side spyware to track this information.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#317

Post by Carpetsmoker » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 8:55 AM UTC

cpuguy83 wrote: post #316

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting how many people come in to your store and how many of them actually but something is not "spying".

You also don't need client side spyware to track this information.

You don't need anything, but it's a useful way to do it without any significant drawbacks. In many cases, it's more or less the only option.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#318

Post by justinclift » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #314

justinclift wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Server side logs aren’t an accurate way of doing analytics ... Based on what? Server side logs records what the server itself sent. That sounds like it should offer far more accuracy than what a JS only solution would do. That being said, if the code for analysing the server logs is lousy, it's not going to help. :)

The identifier in server logs is IP address, which is useless for distinguishing users. On the corporate side, NAT hides all the visits of many people behind a single IP. On the consumer side, ISPs change IP addresses all the time so a single person will show up as multiple IP addresses. Note that I'm just talking about distinguishing people, not identifying or tracking. A basic question like "how many people came to…

> A basic question like "how many people came to my website today" is more accurately answered with client-side analytics than by analyzing web server logs.

How can client side analytics be more accurate, when ad blockers stop visits from even being registered by client-side analytics?

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#319

Post by cpuguy83 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #317

cpuguy83 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also don't need client side spyware to track this information.

You don't need anything, but it's a useful way to do it without any significant drawbacks. In many cases, it's more or less the only option.

It is a significant drawback! It is literally not the only option to the situation you described.

Spying is the only solution for spying, yes. Spying is the only solution to over-eager people wanting mostly useless metrics.

It's not much different than me checking my Twitter "likes" constantly.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#320

Post by juanre » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:54 AM UTC

pauljarvis wrote: post #203

juanre wrote: post #196

I stick to GA because I fear that removing it could impact my site's ranking. Is it an unfounded fear, anyone knows?

We actually looked into this: https://usefathom.com/blog/google-analytics-seo Funny as it sounds, using Fathom instead of GA could increase your SEO rankings :)

Thank you! I'll give it a shot.