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"but most advertisers, sponsors, etc will only trust third party analytics in determining advertising rates, sponsorship levels, etc." Then you are losing at t

by j4kp07 11y ago

"but most advertisers, sponsors, etc will only trust third party analytics in determining advertising rates, sponsorship levels, etc." Then you are losing at the negotiation table and trying to blame "the users". Those advertisers are simply wrong. No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. "I'd wager we'll have some sites start to block those users at some point in the future." And I would wager that it won't help their business increase revenue or decrease expenses.

skybrian 11y ago
This is naive. You can't use raw server logs without filtering out bots. Also, advertisers don't trust site owners to report what's in their server logs accurately, when there is money on the line. It would be easy to cheat. So that's why you need an independent third party.
coderdude 11y ago
> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. Google Analytics provides information that goes far beyond what the server logs can tell you. The logs will give you the most accurate view of the requests to your server but that's all. You can't get insights about bounce rate, behavior, goal completion, conversion rate, etc. from server logs. To rely only on mining server logs would be a huge step backwards for a business.
- guelo 11y ago
  All those things are calculable from web logs.
  - coderdude 11y ago
    How so? I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong if you can show any server log analytics package that is capable of that. It doesn't seem possible.
    - guelo 11y ago
      If each request has a session cookie in the log it's easy to track a user's movements through your site, so you can figure out bounce rate, conversion etc no problem. Things like Piwik have pretty dashboards to generate whatever reports you want from server logs.
      - coderdude 11y ago
        Piwik looks interesting. I'm playing with the demo right now. It does look like they support goals[1]. I can't know for sure how effective it is but I will concede that log analytics is more powerful than I believed. [1]: http://piwik.org/docs/tracking-goals-web-analytics/ http://piwik.org/docs/tracking-goals-web-analytics/ For anyone who wants to play with the demo: http://demo-log-analytics.piwik.org/index.php?module=CoreHome&action=index&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday#?module=Dashboard&action=embeddedIndex&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&idDashboard=1 http://demo-log-analytics.piwik.org/index.php?module=CoreHom...
      - czep 11y ago
        Designing good session identifiers for logging is not trivial. More importantly, with a lot of events happening in javascript, a lot of user interactions are occurring beyond the visibility of your server logs. Tracking js events is also clearly possible, but again, non trivial. I've been in more than one situation where we trusted GA more than our own logs.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    Some stuff, but if you want to emulate GA events you'll have to also implement some additional frontend code and a backend to log those events. I hope this is the direction that we see analytics moving. The information analytics provides developers is great, but I don't like the fact that this information is usually given to multiple third parties by using their analytics engines.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    No they're not. As an example, bounces are commonly the last page where the user left without doing anything. How can you tell that from a simple server log line that says the page loaded? You cant see if they clicked on something or how long they read the page or what other actions they took. Most sites today also go far beyond basic pageviews and track all kinds of events on the page like scrolling rates, reading time, what other headlines you clicked or hovered over, etc. This is not possible without JS tracking.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None This is very, very wrong. Parsing server logs can give you a lot of data but parsing the data directly from the client (ala Google analytics) can give you so, so much more. Data about the client itself, demographic information (beyond ip address locations) and information regarding their interests when hooked into a system that's present on many other sites. Server logs are a great starting point but the amount of relevant data a third party service can give you is so great most are willing to make the tradeoff and use them. I'd rather have all analytics in house but that extra data can be invaluable.
- guelo 11y ago
  Yes, an individual website can't track you throughout the whole web and compile a demographics and interest dosier. Only advertisers have that capability because their Javascript is served up by thousands of websites. But that's the whole conondrum! Advertisers want to track, people do not want to be tracked, thus adblockers.
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    But it's not just that. Server logs do not give you other information that client tracking can gain such as regional and and client information. In all honestly I would be fine losing some of the information that only comes from creating a dossier on a user and bringing the tracking in house it's just a lot of work and services like Google Analytics give that to you for free so it's hard to just ignore especially at a start-up.
ceejayoz 11y ago
> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. For raw pageviews, sure, but try tracking a SPA with server logs, or seeing what the most common screen resolutions are, or seeing what percent of your visitors have Flash installed.
vacri 11y ago
> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. Only if those servers are personally managed by analytics experts.
Bluestrike2 11y ago
It isn't so much a technical issue as it is one of trust and efficiency. GA is familiar, and easy to compare across different sites without worrying about how exactly they're mining their logs. At best, they have to figure out how to make efficient comparisons. At worst, they have to worry about sites inflating their numbers--either through fabrication or just optimistic tweaking of how data is presented. With GA, they don't really have to worry about outright fabrication or reliability. And while there's a ton of data to be teased out of server logs--especially if someone tries to correlate it with other user data they already have--for most advertisers, that doesn't really matter. They don't want to invest the time it'd take to make use of it with all potential properties they want to advertise on. Say what you will about GA and privacy issues, there's a reason why it's become so common place. Not just for site owners, but advertisers as well.
blakeyrat 11y ago
Server logs are easily faked. There's a lot of mistrust in the industry (well-earned, due to many scams in the past). Third-party web analytics providers, implemented via plain-text JavaScript anybody can audit, are fair. (That ignores of course that server logs are virtually useless for determining a user's behavior on a single page app. It's not the ONLY reason server logs aren't used, but perhaps is the most important reason.)

by j4kp07 11y ago

skybrian 11y ago

This is naive. You can't use raw server logs without filtering out bots. Also, advertisers don't trust site owners to report what's in their server logs accurately, when there is money on the line. It would be easy to cheat. So that's why you need an independent third party.

coderdude 11y ago

> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. Google Analytics provides information that goes far beyond what the server logs can tell you. The logs will give you the most accurate view of the requests to your server but that's all. You can't get insights about bounce rate, behavior, goal completion, conversion rate, etc. from server logs. To rely only on mining server logs would be a huge step backwards for a business.

guelo 11y ago
All those things are calculable from web logs.
- coderdude 11y ago
  How so? I'm willing to accept that I'm wrong if you can show any server log analytics package that is capable of that. It doesn't seem possible.
  - guelo 11y ago
    If each request has a session cookie in the log it's easy to track a user's movements through your site, so you can figure out bounce rate, conversion etc no problem. Things like Piwik have pretty dashboards to generate whatever reports you want from server logs.
    - coderdude 11y ago
      Piwik looks interesting. I'm playing with the demo right now. It does look like they support goals[1]. I can't know for sure how effective it is but I will concede that log analytics is more powerful than I believed. [1]: http://piwik.org/docs/tracking-goals-web-analytics/ http://piwik.org/docs/tracking-goals-web-analytics/ For anyone who wants to play with the demo: http://demo-log-analytics.piwik.org/index.php?module=CoreHome&action=index&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday#?module=Dashboard&action=embeddedIndex&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&idDashboard=1 http://demo-log-analytics.piwik.org/index.php?module=CoreHom...
    - czep 11y ago
      Designing good session identifiers for logging is not trivial. More importantly, with a lot of events happening in javascript, a lot of user interactions are occurring beyond the visibility of your server logs. Tracking js events is also clearly possible, but again, non trivial. I've been in more than one situation where we trusted GA more than our own logs.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  Some stuff, but if you want to emulate GA events you'll have to also implement some additional frontend code and a backend to log those events. I hope this is the direction that we see analytics moving. The information analytics provides developers is great, but I don't like the fact that this information is usually given to multiple third parties by using their analytics engines.
- manigandham 11y ago
  No they're not. As an example, bounces are commonly the last page where the user left without doing anything. How can you tell that from a simple server log line that says the page loaded? You cant see if they clicked on something or how long they read the page or what other actions they took. Most sites today also go far beyond basic pageviews and track all kinds of events on the page like scrolling rates, reading time, what other headlines you clicked or hovered over, etc. This is not possible without JS tracking.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None This is very, very wrong. Parsing server logs can give you a lot of data but parsing the data directly from the client (ala Google analytics) can give you so, so much more. Data about the client itself, demographic information (beyond ip address locations) and information regarding their interests when hooked into a system that's present on many other sites. Server logs are a great starting point but the amount of relevant data a third party service can give you is so great most are willing to make the tradeoff and use them. I'd rather have all analytics in house but that extra data can be invaluable.

guelo 11y ago
Yes, an individual website can't track you throughout the whole web and compile a demographics and interest dosier. Only advertisers have that capability because their Javascript is served up by thousands of websites. But that's the whole conondrum! Advertisers want to track, people do not want to be tracked, thus adblockers.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  But it's not just that. Server logs do not give you other information that client tracking can gain such as regional and and client information. In all honestly I would be fine losing some of the information that only comes from creating a dossier on a user and bringing the tracking in house it's just a lot of work and services like Google Analytics give that to you for free so it's hard to just ignore especially at a start-up.

ceejayoz 11y ago

> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. For raw pageviews, sure, but try tracking a SPA with server logs, or seeing what the most common screen resolutions are, or seeing what percent of your visitors have Flash installed.

vacri 11y ago

> No 3rd party analytics service can provide more accurate data than server logs. None. Only if those servers are personally managed by analytics experts.

Bluestrike2 11y ago

It isn't so much a technical issue as it is one of trust and efficiency. GA is familiar, and easy to compare across different sites without worrying about how exactly they're mining their logs. At best, they have to figure out how to make efficient comparisons. At worst, they have to worry about sites inflating their numbers--either through fabrication or just optimistic tweaking of how data is presented. With GA, they don't really have to worry about outright fabrication or reliability. And while there's a ton of data to be teased out of server logs--especially if someone tries to correlate it with other user data they already have--for most advertisers, that doesn't really matter. They don't want to invest the time it'd take to make use of it with all potential properties they want to advertise on. Say what you will about GA and privacy issues, there's a reason why it's become so common place. Not just for site owners, but advertisers as well.

blakeyrat 11y ago

Server logs are easily faked. There's a lot of mistrust in the industry (well-earned, due to many scams in the past). Third-party web analytics providers, implemented via plain-text JavaScript anybody can audit, are fair. (That ignores of course that server logs are virtually useless for determining a user's behavior on a single page app. It's not the ONLY reason server logs aren't used, but perhaps is the most important reason.)