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Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

appleinsider.com

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Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#41

Post by m90 »

dave_aiello wrote: post #8

I have no love for Google Analytics, but as a small-scale publisher, I have serious questions about what tools can replace it: 1) Which analytics can a website employ that is not geared toward enriching the analytics platform developer by violating site visitor privacy? 2) Do those analytics mechanisms have any kind of aftermarket, such that third-party developers integrate it into publishing platforms that publisher…

There's been a recent thread with lot of options discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560823, also https://lobste.rs/s/lvdj3w/lightweight_alternatives_google

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#42

Post by alecco »

PudgePacket wrote: post #32
StartupTree wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense that Apple would buy DuckDuckGo. DGG is just a wrapper around Bing Search. Therefore Apple could recreate DGG from scratch in a month.

The value in DDG is the userbase and brand.

Apple is orders of magnitude bigger on both accounts.

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#43

Post by acituan »

JimDabell wrote: post #31
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4

Suggestion: the access logs your web server collects are enough for basic analytics, and if you are curious for more, you can manually instrument your site a little. You don't need to give Google the power to spy on your users.

Server logs can't do this job well. If the system is designed well, in a lot of cases the users won't be receiving the resource from your server, they will be receiving it from a) their browser cache, b) their local network cache, c) their ISP's cache, or d) a CDN. Your server logs might be showing several thousand hits while the number of times a page is actually shown to somebody might be tens of thousands of hits.…

> Server logs are great for logging what is happening on your server, but awful for understanding your user base.

There is a high correlation between a usage pattern being interesting and likelihood of it making a representative appearance in the logs.

Understanding usage patterns shouldn't depend on knowing absolute numbers. Assuming "dumb" content is cached relatively uniformly, the usage patterns itself should be sufficiently inferable from the logs. For the non-dumb content, why would consumption of highly dynamic endpoints have distortive cache utilization at all?

To add more, how often high-resolution usage data really translates into actual product improvement? What percentage of sites have that much traffic to justify engineering hours spent on micro-growth-hacking based on this level of data?

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#44

Post by throw10382 »

JimDabell wrote: post #31
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4

Suggestion: the access logs your web server collects are enough for basic analytics, and if you are curious for more, you can manually instrument your site a little. You don't need to give Google the power to spy on your users.

Server logs can't do this job well. If the system is designed well, in a lot of cases the users won't be receiving the resource from your server, they will be receiving it from a) their browser cache, b) their local network cache, c) their ISP's cache, or d) a CDN. Your server logs might be showing several thousand hits while the number of times a page is actually shown to somebody might be tens of thousands of hits.…

Is it possible to add a basic ping that pings your server whenever a page loads (cached or not) to get around this?

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#45

Post by m90 »

kall wrote: post #17
dave_aiello wrote: post #8

I have no love for Google Analytics, but as a small-scale publisher, I have serious questions about what tools can replace it: 1) Which analytics can a website employ that is not geared toward enriching the analytics platform developer by violating site visitor privacy? 2) Do those analytics mechanisms have any kind of aftermarket, such that third-party developers integrate it into publishing platforms that publisher…

I think collecting analytics from the server logs is going to get more popular again, though a problem for SPAs? We could call it Edge Analytics this time around and run it on cloudflare. For publishing systems, couldn't wordpress report back analytics data to itself, on its own domain? Something like that existed but i'm not sure if it was using Jetpack servers or not. If this isn't already possible, it seems like a…

This exists over here: https://github.com/ibericode/koko-analytics - never used it myself though.

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#46

Post by mav3rick »

PudgePacket wrote: post #32
StartupTree wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense that Apple would buy DuckDuckGo. DGG is just a wrapper around Bing Search. Therefore Apple could recreate DGG from scratch in a month.

The value in DDG is the userbase and brand.

LOL, and what about the Apple brand ?

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#47

Post by duskwuff »

saagarjha wrote: post #39
panpanna wrote: post #2

How about the 500 other tracking/analytics companies? Even Adobe is now in analytics business.

Adobe is on my list, affiliated with the domain "demdex.net".

Every time I see that domain name, I think of skin mites (Demodex folliculorum).

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#48

Post by dimator »

PudgePacket wrote: post #32
StartupTree wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense that Apple would buy DuckDuckGo. DGG is just a wrapper around Bing Search. Therefore Apple could recreate DGG from scratch in a month.

The value in DDG is the userbase and brand.

I'm not convinced of that. Apple is in a position to invent a search engine, make it real pretty (if not as powerful), and slap it as the default on iOS Safari. Throw in some claims that "it's the most private" so the apple fan base eats it up, and I think apple would take a significant chunk of iOS searches overnight.

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#49

Post by paul7986 »

microtherion wrote: post #38
paul7986 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love if DDG offered email, but they were just a front-end for your iCloud.com email. My Gmail usage would drop a ton. I do have a iCloud email address, but on a desktop I have to leave the browser and open up an email client. I only open email clients while at work cause I have to.

You do realize that you can read e-mail from the browser if you log into icloud.com?

Yeah, but if there was a link within DDG search that took me to a branded DDG email service that would be great. It would just be a cool DDG email front end design, but using iCloud or another 3rd party they partner with. I don't think DDG wants to create their own email service, so this was a thought and Apple/DDG's marketing are similar.

Re: Safari now blocks Google Analytics on sites, new Privacy Report feature shows

#50

Post by TomAnthony »

This article is incorrect.

There does not appear to be a change between Safari 13.1 and Safari 14 for how it handles GA. I have tested it myself.

With Safari 13.1 Apple made a change [1] to their Intelligent Tracking Prevention that blocks all 3rd party cookies for cross site resources.

The only change in Safari 14 appears to be that it reports which domains have had cookies blocked. The Google Analytics beacon is still sent by the browser.

Benedict Evans (cited in article) since deleted his tweet, but this article seems not yet to have been updated.

[1] https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

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