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Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

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Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#271

Post by dealforager »

rozab wrote: post #266
dealforager wrote: post #250

The funny thing is that this is essentially a giant ad for this person's business, and their website uses GA (lol). I've noticed this is an increasingly popular tactic on Reddit and HN. You clickbait people to an article backed with no data that you know will tickle people's emotions. Then at the end you include a call to action to use their service because it will save the world. I used to hate GA as well as ads in…

To be clear, the author doesn't seem to be associated with the alternatives listed at the bottom, although they do have a single line below a divider about a wholly unrelated side project. I don't think there's a problem with posting not-very-substantive articles like this on HN - it's a forum, not just a link aggregator. They often serve as good jumping off points for discussion, especially opinions to the contrary…

Their site uses Google Analytics, doesn't that seem a bit hypocritical? It erodes all trust in the article. The "wholly unrelated side project" is exactly the new marketing tactic that seems to be in fashion these days. Whenever I read an article online I ask myself what the incentives of the author are, and in this case it's pretty clear that their goal is to get people to their website.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#272

Post by charcircuit »

dealforager wrote: post #250

The funny thing is that this is essentially a giant ad for this person's business, and their website uses GA (lol). I've noticed this is an increasingly popular tactic on Reddit and HN. You clickbait people to an article backed with no data that you know will tickle people's emotions. Then at the end you include a call to action to use their service because it will save the world. I used to hate GA as well as ads in…

There's a setting for if the data can be used for ad personalization.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#273

Post by charcircuit »

spinningslate wrote: post #200
m1117 wrote: post #106

Google analytics is great. It has its issues, but overall 1. They've built a working product that is easy to connect and use 2. It fits to a lot of use cases and barely has issues 3. Easy to start using, no engineering overhead 4. I don't understand what the author trying to say. Should google be a charity? Or should they stop making good product? Or does the author want to cover the cost of all the other product tha…

Just no. Ignore the hyperbole in the article and the crux boils down to this: - Using GA means you're paying for your analytics with your users' privacy. The product is 'good' iff (if and only if) you're willing to accept those economics and ethics. You want analytics; that suggests they has some value to you. You don't want to pay cash money for it. That's your choice. But it's not free. Your users are paying for yo…

GA gives people the option if they want to enable / disable usage for ad personalization.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#274

Post by mr_toad »

musicale wrote: post #216
boplicity wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh? Analytics is how you focus on your product. For the first decade of my career, I really believed this, and spent a lot of time doing split tests, and studying analytics, and trying to "make things better" by understanding the numbers as they were given to me. This was a mistake. I've since learned that these numbers will rarely help me make meaningful improvements to my product, and my business. Sure, they can…

Apple famously "ignores" its users, partly because users usually can't see far beyond what is in front of them, often because they don't know about impending advances in technology or clever new designs. They'll ask for faster, cheaper versions of what they already have (faster horses, cheaper buggy whips as they say) rather than the next big thing. Faster/cheaper weren't the primary draws of the Mac, iPod, iPhone, i…

Apple does collect a lot of analytics though.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#275

Post by crazygringo »

unishark wrote: post #269
crazygringo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they simply aren't going to show me how to create an ingenious idea that takes things to the next level. Of course not. There's no substitute for straight-up creativity and deep thinking. But once you have your ingenious idea, you still have to design it, make sure it's clear to users, that they find it and can use it effectively. Your "ingenious idea" may turn out to be largely sabotaged if a button you though…

If you are unable to find out that 90 percent of people can't use a major feature that you thought would differentiate your product, you are missing all forms of feedback, including much more important sources besides analytics.

I disagree completely because I've seen it in practice.

A button turns out to be below the fold on common small screen sizes that a new designer forgot to consider. A bad translation results in 90% of users in a particular country misunderstanding something. A JavaScript library doesn't work on a common Android phone you don't test with. Latency issues make something virtually unusable from the other side of the country because of a single badly written function that's easy to rewrite -- but you still have to catch it!

You need ALL forms of feedback. It's not a question of some being more important than others. They're all important and play their own unique roles. Analytics is for catching AND debugging all the things that go wrong at scale in the real world, as opposed to the artificial and limited environments used for user testing.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#277

Post by marvinblum »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #202
marvinblum wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still track campaigns using utm query parameters.

And Google ads ui updates?

You're probably right, there is nothing to fully replace it. But maybe we don't have to and build something new and better instead.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#278

Post by dealforager »

aembleton wrote: post #263

This ends with the author promoting his new 'bootstrapped app': https://keepthescore.co/ That website uses Google Analytics!

Well, it looks like they succeeded in their goal which was to funnel traffic to their site. It's now a top post on HN, with a top comment directly linking to their site, and I'm sure it will be shared in other places. This is partly why I'm not sure about blocking ads. I'd rather have ads be ads, and not have to read everything like it's a research paper to know if it's secretly an ad. Aside from personal blogs and forums, a lot of the internet is an ad in one way or another, although forums are also becoming more ad-y.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#279

Post by mr_toad »

boffinism wrote: post #24

I really didn't want to use Google Analytics for a personal site (details in bio), but because it's a non-monetised personal site I really didn't want to spend money to know how many visitors I had, but because I'm trying to learn about content I really did want to know how many visitors I had, because that's a good way of discovering what content resonates etc. I tried PanelBear, but because I briefly hit the front…

> I wish there was something very basic

You can get rough user stats from the logs with grep, wc, sort and uniq, no need to burden the page with tracking.

Re: Google Analytics: Stop feeding the beast

#280

Post by Nextgrid »

m1117 wrote: post #262
Nextgrid wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone is disputing the greatness of Google Analytics on a functional level. The problem is that indeed Google isn’t a charity and will not give away such a powerful tool for free without getting something in return. That return is the privilege of stalking all your website’s visitors, which are often not aware of the tracking and have no say in the matter. Furthermore it would be against the GDPR if it…

That's a great way to monetize. I have my website, it runs on GA and I'm happy to share the data instead of paying cash. I have under 1000 visits a day. I agreed on the agreement.

The problem is that it is not your data you're sharing.
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