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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#233

Post by donohoe »

Lets examine these "claims" a bit more closely...

  It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed
Everything affects sites-peed. However its 19KB, thats not awful.

  It’s overkill for the majority of site owners
Yes, agreed. But so what.

  It’s a privacy liability and requires an extensive privacy policy
Would be nice if if it offered specifics on the "liability" but it does not. And for the weight of an "extensive privacy policy", I'm not buying this as a great reason.

  It worsens the user experience due to the necessity of annoying prompts.
Again, what!? I'm not seeing these prompts.

  It’s blocked by many browsers (e.g. Firefox) so the data is not very accurate.
And its blocked by ad-blockers and so much more. The point is to know what your users do. Its good to know you got 1M unique visitors last month, but I don't need to know I got 1,214,551 unique visitors. All analytic packages have problems like this.

And by the way: I don't like Google Analytics, I think Plausible is a great step in the right direction, but this post is a poorly researched rant and should not be on HN.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#234

Post by smt88 »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #164
nitrogen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that way. My customers liked my products, but I didn't really get many new customers. I doubled down on improving the technology. Then I ran out of money. "If you build it, they will come" is only very rarely true, and chances are there was some kind of submarine marketing going on anyway that you just didn't know about.

I wonder what makes nerds like us end up with that opinion. Surely anyone that reaches adulthood ought to know that selling yourself well and having some damn good looks will bring your farther than just being the real deal? It takes some huge lack of awareness of one's surrounding not to notice it

It's because we constantly spend time/effort on finding better solutions to things, but most people don't.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#235

Post by throw_awy_1 »

partiallypro wrote: post #215
throw_awy_1 wrote: post #30

Another idea: also stop using Google to show ads on your web site (adsense). As the article states, you get to decide how much tracking your visitors are subjected to.

Google owns the digital ad market with no real competitors, you would have to move to a subscription model to make money. Good luck with that, unless you feed another beast like Substack.

Would agree Google Adsense is the giant but they still have competition. A quick search on duckduckgo revealed at least some to investigate.

Note - many of these are probably just as scummy or moreso than adsense but they, at a minimum, are not part of Google.

    Media.net
    PropellerAds
    Amazon Native Shopping Ads
    Adversal
    Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
    Skimlinks
    Monumetric
    InfoLinks
    ylliX
    Evadav
    PopCash
    PopAds
    RevContent
    Adsterra
    SHE Media
    AdRecover
    MadAds Media
    Bidvertiser
    Adbuff
    BuySellAds
    AdClickMedia

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#236

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

jamesdhutton wrote: post #161

The author blames Google for the fact that recipe sites force you to wade through a long preamble before you get to the recipe. But if internet advertising didn't exist, then the recipe site would be charging him for the recipe. Recipe authors have to make a living somehow. If he doesn't want ads in his recipes, then he could always go out and buy a recipe book.

I also find the claim itself rather implausible and it makes me think the author just has a generic anti-tech bias. (Know what else Google is responsible for? Forwards from Grandma! And reposts on your favorite subreddit! And people ghosting you on Tinder!)

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#237

Post by walshemj »

ivanhoe wrote: post #181
heipei wrote: post #3

Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. If your success relies solely on "improving conversions" by tracking your users and then changing the position and color of your "Checkout" button then maybe try setting yourself apart such that customers want to buy your product even despite an obnoxious purchasing flow. Only then start optimizing it. More serious thoughts: Google Analytics i…

> Here's a crazy idea: Don't use analytics at all but focus on your product. Here's even crazier one: Just do analytics on the backend instead?! You don't need GA, nor 3rd party tracking cookies, just a simple session ID and a proper web-server's log analyzer, and you can get almost all of the same metrics. You can nowadays even sniff on clients' screen resolutions and other browser details using just img srcset, css…

And ho many developer hours are you spending doing this at scale? - I doing this in 95 doing this for BT worldwide's Intranet.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#238

Post by pcstl »

musicale wrote: post #227
pcstl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that useful for Apple to collect analytics because they make physical products, where the potential of analytics is limited. When it comes to a SaaS or a web page, the possibilities of analytics are much greater. And yet, Macs will still send usage and performance data to Apple so they can incorporate that information into future product versions and find out about system software issues.

And you can turn it off. ;-) I guess the point is not that crash reports and slowdown data aren't useful (they are), but that they tend to give you incremental improvements. That being said, incremental improvements over a decade can make a big difference, as Apple also demonstrates.

I guess we can all agree that if someone wants to include analytics in their product, an opt-out would be nice.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#239

Post by spinningslate »

zserge wrote: post #219
spinningslate wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realise this is a blit blunt, but what you're saying is: - I have this site - I want analytics => they have some value to me - I'm not willing/able to pay for it with my money - I am willing to pay for it with my users' privacy. That's the GA value equation. You get analytics, you pay with your users' privacy to feed the google advertising machine. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but we should be crystal clear…

Seems like there's a bit of exaggeration here. "Not willing to pay" != "not willing to pay 10+€/month for 30 distinct semi-random numbers each month". There are plenty of people willing to pay low prices (comparable to a barely warm cup of some really bad coffee) for analytics to help them make decisions. Imagine, you write one blog post per month. How much would you pay if I told you which of your blog posts this ye…

It's not exaggeration but you make a valid point: I might revise the 3rd bullet to read "I'm not willing to pay the minimum price the market offers".

But that's missing the point:

>Then what do you think would be the fair price of this information?

It's not how much you pay, it's who pays. With GA, you're deciding that your users will pay on your behalf.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#240

Post by notretarded »

donohoe wrote: post #233

Lets examine these "claims" a bit more closely... It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed Everything affects sites-peed. However its 19KB, thats not awful. It’s overkill for the majority of site owners Yes, agreed. But so what. It’s a privacy liability and requires an extensive privacy policy Would be nice if if it offered specifics on the "liability" but it does not. And for the weight of an "extensive pr…

Nice try Google employee
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