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> "[Google Analytics is] assembling data profiles on your website visitors, which they can then use for better targeting of advertisements across their network.
by eli 8y ago
> "[Google Analytics is] assembling data profiles on your website visitors, which they can then use for better targeting of advertisements across their network."
I'm pretty sure this is misleading/false. I don't think Google uses Analytics data from your site to target AdWords on other sites.
Maybe it's true in a general sense that GA gives them lots of aggregate data which they can use to make smarter business decisions about other products including ads. But it is a myth that Google Analytics data feeds directly into any Google ad-targeting platform.
I think the main thing Google gets out of free-tier Analytics is it encourages small webmasters to pay attention to their traffic and makes it easy to demonstrate the value of buying ads from Google.
- nerdponx 8y agoThis may have been true at one point, but I don't think it's true anymore. https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245 https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites Interesting aside: Google Analytics customers are required to prominently state that their site uses Google Analytics. I suspect many, if not most, customers don't do this.
- eli 8y agoIt's admittedly confusing, but I think I'm still right and that you may be conflating policies about other google services. From your second link, which is specific to Analytics, it says: > What is the data used for? > Google uses Google Analytics data to provide the Google Analytics measurement service to customers. Identifiers such as cookies and app instance IDs are used to measure user interactions with a customer’s sites and/or apps, while IP addresses are used to provide and protect the security of the service, and to give the customer a sense of where in the world their users come from. I'm pretty sure GA data doesn't intermingle with AdWords targeting profiles in a default configuration.
- reaperducer 8y agoI'm pretty sure GA data doesn't intermingle with AdWords targeting profiles in a default configuration. If that was true, then Google wouldn't consider it a violation of its ToS for HIPAA-covered entities to use its analytics product. "If you are (or become) a Covered Entity or Business Associate under HIPAA, you may not use Google Analytics for any purpose or in any manner involving Protected Health Information unless you have received prior written consent to such use from Google." Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en
- eli 8y agoI don't see how one thing follows from the other. GA is obviously not intended for storing Protected Health Information.
- vsl 8y agoGA has per site unique cookies. It cannot very well build profiles that the conspiracy theories accuse it of. As for the quotes terms, the same are there for any personal information (in my EU-based account at least) and you grossly misread it: it says you cannot send Google protected classes of information, not that you cannot use GA at all. The reason is obvious: Google does not want to have any legal obligations from running GA. Same with forbidding storage of personal information.
- nerdponx 8y agoI think it does, because I recall years ago their privacy policy explicitly saying that they don't use GA data for any other purposes. I don't have a source to back that up, but I've noticed that their privacy policy has grown to be somewhat labyrinthine since then, and I couldn't find that explicit statement anymore.
- hinkley 8y agoIf you and I had a legal document that stated I owed you a box of cookies every week, and one day you noticed that clause was gone from our revised agreement, what do you suppose your odds are of getting any cookies from me next year?