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13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

markosaric.com

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Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#131

Post by b112 »

lmkg wrote: post #127
b112 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it, please see my other response. RE: random bash commands. Part of the reason I linked shopify's SPF page to them -- an attempt to provide external validation. But I get it. Which is why, as I mention in that other response, it doesn't matter what I send. Even pleas to forward to a technical person = ignored. (I bet lots of tech people get forwarded all sorts of crap that IS a scam, so yell "DON'T FORWARD THIS…

Tell them that you placed an order, and did not receive a confirmation email. If you really feel obligated, you can mention something about SPF settings, but I literally would not provide more detail than "it might be related to your SPF settings."

Ah yes. Which is only sometimes responded to, and if so, with a "Check your SPAM folder" email.

If you respond to that without technical data, then you're basically saying "No, I did not receive it", and their response is "Your gmail lost it" (because mail = gmail).

The problem is that emails sent with "I didn't get the confirm email" are immediately thought to be "user error". And you know what?

99.9999% of the time, they surely are. Bad email providers, lost in SPAM folders, even missed in INBOX.

So if you don't include tech info, you're stuck in this category, else many exchanges back and forth.

Because once I then respond with technical info?

You get the same glassy-eyed type of incomprehension, with often zero response. Or a response that invites another 5 back and forths, with the other side upset, because now they feel ignorant.

I feel there really is no proper answer here... except, I still have to try. :P

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#132

Post by lucideer »

sandworm101 wrote: post #130
salicideblock wrote: post #68

Seeing that Plausible Analytics is not using cookies and instead hashes fields including IP address - the measure of "unique site visitors" could be a proxy for false uniques by Plausible Analytics. For example, an user visits once via his data connection and once via wifi - Plausible may see different users where Google's cookie will pin it as one user. Another interesting result is the 16% of total page views - I d…

I don't see why the focus is on "unique" visitors. To compare to older media, if someone buys two newspapers then they are a double-good customer. Either they are spending so much time reading it themselves that they need two copies (ie reading via two devices/IP addresses) or they are giving that second copy to a friend (two people, one device). So imho page view should be valid regardless of uniqueness (absent bot…

This depends on monetization.

If you're selling copies of newspapers, 2 purchases by 1 customer = 2 purchases. The number of customers is irrelevant.

If you're monetizing via on-page ads or affiliate links (as the author is), revenue is much more likely to correlate to unique visitors than to page views.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#133

Post by __alexs »

m90 wrote: post #54
__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…

Even if this hash would include a salt and the salt is rotated daily, you'd still be able to reverse information for the last day (there's an interesting doc by the European Union itself on that topic: https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-work/publications... ). I feel most of these "privacy" focused analytics tools are mostly about working around the need for a cookie banner. I also don't get how they can cont…

The thing is the "cookie banner" is not required simply because you use cookies. Consent is required for any processing of PII regardless of the technical means through which you get it.

I don't know if "privacy" is just a marketing tactic but I have definitely seen a lot of misplaced good deeds based on not understanding the regulation correctly.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#134

Post by toomanybeersies »

iwannahelp wrote: post #96
toomanybeersies wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that 30-40% on all platforms or just desktop though? I don't have an ad blocker on my phone, yet use ublock origin on my Macbook + Chrome. I suspect this is pretty common, as it's harder to set up ad blocking for your mobile browser than desktop.

It's actually super easy now, with PiHole if you'd like to self-host or NextDNS if you want something that Just Works.

I wouldn't describe either of those as "super easy", especially for non-technical people, compared to going to the Chrome Web Store and clicking install on uBlock Origin.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#135

Post by macNchz »

idoubtit wrote: post #121

How many sites break because of Google Analytics being blocked? Do they even realize that their content appears broken? Many sites use JavaScript client-rendering, even for static content. Sometimes, the analytics failure blocks the rendering. I've experimented it recently, with a blank page for a French governmental site (securite routiere) and with a truncated content for an American newspaper (Boston Globe, IIRC).…

I think the most common and critical failure mode I’ve seen is when websites wrap click handlers for important conversion events (ie “Complete Purchase” or “Join Mailing List” buttons) in a call to a tracking script.

Google Tag Manager has a callback system that makes it really easy to trigger an event and wait for all the tracking pixels to fire before you advance someone to the next page, “guaranteeing” that you capture the events. If GTM is blocked and no effort has been made to handle a case where it didn’t load, however, the Complete Purchase button just straight up won’t work. I debugged this behavior in a high traffic site several years ago and have since noticed it all over the internet. With how widespread ad blockers are these days–especially in some demographics–I’d consider it an important QA step to ensure that customers can actually pay you even if they’re blocking ads and trackers.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#136

Post by sandworm101 »

lucideer wrote: post #132
sandworm101 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why the focus is on "unique" visitors. To compare to older media, if someone buys two newspapers then they are a double-good customer. Either they are spending so much time reading it themselves that they need two copies (ie reading via two devices/IP addresses) or they are giving that second copy to a friend (two people, one device). So imho page view should be valid regardless of uniqueness (absent bot…

This depends on monetization. If you're selling copies of newspapers, 2 purchases by 1 customer = 2 purchases. The number of customers is irrelevant. If you're monetizing via on-page ads or affiliate links (as the author is), revenue is much more likely to correlate to unique visitors than to page views.

>> revenue is much more likely to correlate to unique visitors

That's the bit I don't understand. Why does an advertiser not value a customer seeing an ad twice, or for a longer time? In fact I would say that those customers are much more valuable because their multiple views bookend an extended period of viewing an ad. If I view a website at home in the morning, then again while at work, I have been exposed to that ad for many minutes, as opposed to one-time readers who click away within seconds. That has to be worth something more.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#137

Post by lightswitch05 »

jamescridland wrote: post #123

1. the OP works for Plausible 2. The OP uses a non-standard call to Plausible which probably isn’t in many block lists 3. It’s in mine

So, the domain in question is ms.markosaric.com. Which is a CNAME to custom.plausible.io. uBlock Origin is able to block based on CNAMEs, but it is not a default configuration. PiHole V5 blocks based on CNAME as well, and it is actually enabled by default.

I run a little blocklist project [1] and I've had custom.plausible.io blocked in my list since April 8th [2]. So, although I didn't have ms.markosaric.com blocked directly in my list, the PiHole still would have blocked it via CNAME blocking. Also uBlock origin if you have CNAME blocking enabled.

[1] https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/

[2] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/commit/21fd108ffd2996...

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#138

Post by salicideblock »

sandworm101 wrote: post #130
salicideblock wrote: post #68

Seeing that Plausible Analytics is not using cookies and instead hashes fields including IP address - the measure of "unique site visitors" could be a proxy for false uniques by Plausible Analytics. For example, an user visits once via his data connection and once via wifi - Plausible may see different users where Google's cookie will pin it as one user. Another interesting result is the 16% of total page views - I d…

I don't see why the focus is on "unique" visitors. To compare to older media, if someone buys two newspapers then they are a double-good customer. Either they are spending so much time reading it themselves that they need two copies (ie reading via two devices/IP addresses) or they are giving that second copy to a friend (two people, one device). So imho page view should be valid regardless of uniqueness (absent bot…

Well, if I were buying an ad I guess I would pay more to reach 10 people one time, rather than 1 person 10 times. It would increase my chances of getting a receptive customer.

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#139

Post by [deleted] »

gorhill wrote: post #101
chrismorgan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a CNAME (tracker.mysite.example → tracker.example), uBlock Origin on Firefox will still be able to block it. (I have no idea whether Plausible offers this mode of operation. I don’t see “CNAME” mentioned on their site, so probably not.) If you run some kind of proxy yourself on an unconventional name (e.g. “ads.mysite.example” may well be blocked) and make sure that any script it needs loads from your own…

> I have no idea whether Plausible offers this mode of operation The site of the article cloaks `custom.plausible.io` as `ms.markosaric.com`.

[deleted]

Re: 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

#140

Post by AndrewStephens »

salicideblock wrote: post #68

Seeing that Plausible Analytics is not using cookies and instead hashes fields including IP address - the measure of "unique site visitors" could be a proxy for false uniques by Plausible Analytics. For example, an user visits once via his data connection and once via wifi - Plausible may see different users where Google's cookie will pin it as one user. Another interesting result is the 16% of total page views - I d…

I think this is probably correct. I wrote my own hit-tracker for my website and I spent a lot of time looking at logs to see if I could reliably track unique users by hashing headers and the IP address. My conclusion is that you can't - you will always double count some users.

It is no uncommon for consecutive requests from obviously the same user to come in from different IP addresses. Usually these are either cell phone users whose network changes from second to second, or browsers behind big proxies with multiple servers fetching content.

For example, I would see this quite often (all fields made up):

  75.34.234.71 index.html mobile-browser-v25
  75.34.234.75 style.css mobile-browser-v25
  75.34.234.75 header.jpg mobile-browser-v25
  75.34.234.72 code.js mobile-browser-v25
Plausible would plausibly see that as 3 different users.

Another problem is bots. So many bots. Some that take the trouble to mimic real browsers - they don't know they are bots. And they have a plan.

Most bots don't bother to execute javascript but analytics that rely on single-pixel webbugs and the like will likely show inflated numbers.

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