
It’s Time to Ditch Google Analytics - pauljarvis
https://www.fastcompany.com/90300072/its-time-to-ditch-google-analytics
======
AndrewStephens
In my opinion, the whole idea of a third-party analytics system as they are
currently implemented is incompatible with the idea of privacy. As soon as
more than one site uses the same analytics system, then the company running
the analytics system has aggregate data that the user did not consent to.

As a site owner, it is disingenuous showing your users a banner that says
"This site uses cookies to allow us to maintain state" while leaving out the
part about "This site uses google analytics which allows Google to track you
across sites and build nearly complete picture of every page you browse".

The smaller hosted analytics systems claim to be more privacy oriented but I
don't trust them either. Even with the best of intentions, sooner-or-later
they will be sold or pivot. The data is just too valuable.

I know that some sites live and die by close reading of analytics but most
sites don't need anything as elaborate. I implemented a very simple page
counter than I host myself but that is just for vanity. Most sites don't even
need that.

~~~
pauljarvis
I can only speak to Fathom (since that's my product), but we have no personal
data to sell if we sold our product. We collect nothing about website visitors
other than a tick in the aggregate data. So if we sold our business, there's
zero personal information from website visitors on any of our customers
dashboards that could be used against them.

~~~
JohnFen
> other than a tick in the aggregate data

What sorts of data items do you collect, though?

~~~
pauljarvis
Our source code is open-source, you can view it here:
[https://github.com/usefathom/fathom](https://github.com/usefathom/fathom)

That's another way we're transparent. Anyone who knows code can see exactly
how we collect data and what data we collect.

~~~
noir_lord
It's great but code on a GitHub repo doesn't mean that's whats running in
production.

Note I'm not saying you are doing anything nefarious but that the source code
been available isn't sufficient alone.

------
minkeymaniac
Interesting.. do a view source and you find this on the page

    
    
      <script>
        (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
        (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
        m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
        })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
    
        ga('create', 'UA-4300461-2', 'auto');
        ga('create', 'UA-4300461-33', 'auto', {'name': 'rollup'});
        
          ga('rollup.set', 'dimension1', 'fastcompany');
        
          ga('rollup.set', 'dimension2', 'co-design');
        
          ga('rollup.set', 'dimension6', '2019-02-01');

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Along with Facebook and Twitter links and also Google tag manager.

It's extremely hard to get rid of Google out of your life

~~~
pmoriarty
Is it?

Just turn off javascript.

~~~
51lver
Changing your user agent to midori or links is surprisingly effective.

------
ksec
The time to ditch GA was a long time ago, but over the years there wasn't even
a single decent competitor that suits me.

I stumble upon Reinvigorate.net, it has potential, but it was acquired by
Adobe if I remember correctly.

There was Gaug.es, it got acquired by Github, then it sat there and no more
active development.

There was Gosquared, I cant remember why it didn't fit ( Needs to look again )

There was Clicky, one of the cheapest around, and does all tracking metrics
you will need. Except the UI... doesn't really make you want to use it.

The two shown in the article, Simple and Fathom, were lacking way too many
information. Browser, Resolution, Devices, Location etc.

The best thing that came out in the last few years were GoAccess. Self Hosted
log analyser, except not everyone wants the hassle of setting it up.

The closest thing to something I want would be Ghostboard, unfortunately it
only works for Ghost.

~~~
Rotareti
Have you tried matomo? [https://github.com/matomo-
org/matomo](https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo)

------
skybrian
For all the complaining, can you point to anyone, anywhere, who has been
harmed by Google Analytics?

There are real issues with privacy, but the scaremongering sometimes seems to
be independent of any actual harm to users.

~~~
wool_gather
Without commenting on Google Analytics itself, why on earth would we wait
until _after_ something bad happens? If real risks can be identified, then one
should think seriously about whether they outweigh the gains.

If the gains are worth the risk, then that's fine, but there's nothing
"scaremongering" about pointing out things that could go wrong. That's at
least half of engineering as a discipline.

~~~
skybrian
That's a good point and I would like to read a good risk analysis. The problem
is that when large companies are involved, you get very superficial risk
analysis. Something analogous to:

"The worst thing that could happen if I put my money in a bank is they take
all my money. So, we shouldn't put money in banks."

If you point out that this generally doesn't happen people will talk about
what the company _could_ do.

How do we get beyond fully general arguments that you can never trust any
company to do anything (or alternatively that theoretical risks don't matter)?
I guess to really understand the risk you'd have to understand a company's
internal controls, and those generally aren't public.

------
ganeshkrishnan
An issue with other analytics is that it's hard to track Google ads
performance as analytics is tightly integrated with Google ads which let's us
know what keywords got signups etc.

Google is embedded like a tick across the internet and getting rid of it is
really really hard.

~~~
rbinv
Not that hard, really, as Google Ads exposes all data via their API.

Of course you'd need to glue the data together with whatever you have, but
it's not really that hard to do.

------
notjustanymike
There's always something rich about these articles being posted online. I
promise you the author of the article has no control over the business
decisions Fast Company is making. While he ethically believes what he's
writing he also knows how completely impossible it is to actually change the
business' mind.

The only way a business changes is when there's a detectable impact on their
income.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" The only way a business changes is when there's a detectable impact on
their income."_

Or when they're legally required to.

Or when a new upper management come in with a different philosophy or approach
(Microsoft's new CEO is often credited here on HN as changing Microsoft's
attitude towards open source).

Or when the company's employees protest effectively enough (see the recent
Google employee revolts).

------
JohnFen
I ditched it a long time ago -- I block GA scripts along with all of the other
trackers.

~~~
strmpnk
I do this too. The only downside seems to be that I get caught in recaptchas
constantly now. Google seems to know how to make tracker avoidance painful
enough that I doubt most would follow through with it after a few weeks.

~~~
toupeira
I read somewhere that selecting a bit of text before clicking the "I'm not a
robot" checkbox helps to avoid the Recaptcha popup. I've started doing this
and think I've been seeing them far less often, but of course it's possible
I'm fooling myself.

And I guess it will only be a matter of time before robots will start doing
this too, so please don't tell anyone ;-)

~~~
51lver
That makes sense. They are profiling your responses to the captcha, not just
checking for the correct answer.

They always seem to make me "play" their stupid "find the cars" game a lot
longer when I quickly choose them. 20 minutes straight one time. Yeah I felt
violated. It was on my stupid state unemployment benefits application page.
Talk about being kicked while you're down. Not only do I have to convince the
state I'm a citizen and eligible, I have to convince google I'm not a robot
first.

------
ljoshua
Does anyone know if Google uses GA data (in particular bounce rates, time-on-
site, etc.) as signals in rankings? I've always wondered if the additional
data gathered once a user clicks through from the SERP to the site was
eventually factored in to the site's ranking. (For example, a faster site
receiving better rankings.)

~~~
rbinv
Google has a separate tracking mechanism with regards to bounce/back to SERP
rates which does not require GA at all. Time on site could theoretically be
implied.

It has also been (somewhat officially) stated that GA data is not used for
ranking purposes, but make of that what you will.

Since they also render pages themselves, they don't really need client page
load metrics to evaluate rendering performance.

