13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#31

Post by yonixw » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:38 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior.

Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence. Showing better alternatives is the way to go.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#32

Post by iamacyborg » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

yonixw wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence…

Analytics are fine, the problem is analytics without consent.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#33

Post by 6nf » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

yonixw wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence…

You can collect analytics yourself, no Google needed.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#34

Post by Symbiote » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #20

Slightly off topic: Plausible claim that their cookieless tracking is GDPR compliant but this seems a bit shaky to me. Unless they are doing something that isn't specified in their docs their fingerprinting seems reversible which would make their user identifiers PII like any session ID you'd store in a cookie. AIUI the GDPR doesn't particularly care about cookies, it cares about you tracking people without their con…

It seems on-topic, since the post is essentially advertising the Plausible.io service.

> In summary, here’s how we assign a hash that we use for unique user counting:

  hash(website_domain + ip_address + user_agent)

Would adding a daily salt to this make it compliant? You'd no longer be able to track if someone returns to the website the next day.

https://plausible.io/data-policy

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#35

Post by dakiol » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

yonixw wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence…

This is not true. One can make a product better without relying on analytics. Sure, it takes more time (and probably more skilled people) but it's possible. There are companies out there doing well without GA.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#36

Post by chrismorgan » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

Simon_says wrote: post #3

> How I implemented my study > I installed Google Analytics alongside Plausible Analytics on three sites in June. All he measured was people who load Plausible Analytics and not Google Analytics. Anybody running noscript (like me) wouldn't have shown up here at all.

A technical note: it is possible to do limited client-side tracking of such users:

This won’t activate if some of the scripts on the page get run, only if none of them get run. Also any ad blockers that block tracker.example will still block this.

Some of Google’s tracking things include (or used to include?) such a snippet. But broadly the technique has fallen into disuse. I don’t see Plausible advertising any way for it to work, and their main snippet POSTs to https://plausible.io/api/event, which an image won’t be able to achieve.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#37

Post by secondcoming » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #20

Slightly off topic: Plausible claim that their cookieless tracking is GDPR compliant but this seems a bit shaky to me. Unless they are doing something that isn't specified in their docs their fingerprinting seems reversible which would make their user identifiers PII like any session ID you'd store in a cookie. AIUI the GDPR doesn't particularly care about cookies, it cares about you tracking people without their con…

It's not impossible to fingerprint people by using the GDPR consent cookie itself.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#38

Post by mahesh_rm » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

Rightfully so. Shameless plug, a few months ago I began working on a privacy conscious UX/UI research and qualitative analytics tool [0] based on open source (MIT) technologies, which aims at offering a self hostable backend. It's in alpha, feel free to reach out if you want to give it a spin.

[0] https://www.sessionforward.com

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#39

Post by lawn » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

yonixw wrote: post #31

onion2k wrote: post #4

None of my website users need to block Google Analytics.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence…

Why is analytics synonymous with Google analytics?

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#40

Post by yonixw » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:43 AM UTC

6nf wrote: post #33

yonixw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to say, but without analytics and campaign analytics, you probably don't know what your user want or need. I don't like the analytics auto hate behavior. Edit: I don't justify google and facebook wrongdoing in the past and present. But to hate on those who are (forced) using them and calling to remove them from the website is not helping without an alternative. It will surly take a toll on your digital presence…

You can collect analytics yourself, no Google needed.

Not ads insight which are crucial in digital marketing.