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I'm refusing to implement Google Analytics on my startup's product. Because it's slow, but mainly because I don't trust Google enough to let them put whatever c

I'm refusing to implement Google Analytics on my startup's product. Because it's slow, but mainly because I don't trust Google enough to let them put whatever code they like on my page. I'm running into serious flak from the marketing team because they don't know how to use any other tool. GA is the industry standard, apparently, and every site uses it, etc etc. They're even hinting that not using it could affect our SEO (I haven't seen any evidence for that, but if so it just reinforces my desire to not give Evil Google our traffic). Even a couple of years ago, this wouldn't have been a problem. I trusted them to do the right thing. Now. No. Google is the new M$

faeyanpiraat 7y ago
Oblivious marketing ppl bullying tech guys into doing stupid things. Such a classic. Unfortunately I have a hunch aswell that not adding GA does indeed negatively affects SEO. How would it be possible to prove/disprove this?
- mojuba 7y ago
  Experiment with your own web sites? Create two of them with and without GA, possibly with different content because Google seems to be able to detect duplication, then try to promote both (this is the difficult part of course) and compare.
  - mmahemoff 7y ago
    It's hard to do any kind of objective comparison like this when it comes to SEO. It takes months to see any effect and even then you will have to speculate. You could try to remove GA from half the pages on an existing site one day and see if those subsequently drop more, if you have enough pages to experiment with.
    - mojuba 7y ago
      There is some evidence that older pages (>10 years old) drop out if they don't use any of Google's plugins. I think it was Tim Bray who was one of the first who noticed [1] I also found another case of a lot of un-googleable reddit pages from only 5 years ago. They just don't exist on Google anymore even though they are linked from e.g. peoples profiles who commented there. Someone decided that Reddit is not important, or maybe there's some broader exclusion criteria in place. [1] https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is-losing-its-memory https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is...
      - mmahemoff 7y ago
        I didn't read the comments, but the article didn't mention anything about Google plugins, did it? I suppose it's possible Google used GA stats and maybe even content fingerprinting to determine if certain pages should be indexed, or reminded from the index, and how often to crawl them if indexed.
        mojuba 7y ago
        True, I think it was in various discussions here on HN including maybe under Tim Bray's article too. Same kind of rumors were circulating regarding AMP. There is still no direct evidence that Google's web plugins matter, but at least it seems like spammy websites that are fully equipped with Google's stuff get favorable ranking. And vice versa, you won't see high ranking spammy results that are not crammed with GA, Google Fonts and what not.
- OnlineHeaven 7y ago
  Adding Google Analytics is probably good for escaping the "Google Sandbox." There's clearly some sort of review process (algorithm or manual review) before a website starts ranking well in the Google SERPs.
OnlineHeaven 7y ago
Yeah that's a tough one because there aren't many "legitimate" competitors to GA other than clicky from what I know. Sounds like an opportunity.
d33 7y ago
Surprised nobody mentioned Matomo Analytics yet: https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/ It's FLOSS, comes both self-hosted and as a paid service and it's pretty good. Perhaps good enough for your use case?
- stilisstuk 7y ago
  Many government sites uses matomo in Denmark. It's good.
- kpennell 7y ago
  thanks for mentioning
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  thanks for the tip :)
- nathcd 7y ago
  Or, we could stop sending people programs to track themselves on their own computers. Just use your server logs. I don't care how much of an inconvenience it is, you should never have started doing any client-side tracking in the first place.
  - smashingfiasco 7y ago
    I concur.
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    But if I do that then how am I going to convince investors to give me so much funding I can sell my company and retire?
  - pythux 7y ago
    Great point! We wrote about how we're doing it on whotracks.me a while ago, if anyone is wondering how that could work: https://whotracks.me/blog/private_analytics.html https://whotracks.me/blog/private_analytics.html
golemiprague 7y ago
My main concern with GA is that many people put an ad blocker on their browser and it blocks the GA script. The alternative is to channel this data via our servers but then I might as well just use my own database to collect this info, why give it to Google? There are similiar open source tools which are good enough.

faeyanpiraat 7y ago

Oblivious marketing ppl bullying tech guys into doing stupid things. Such a classic. Unfortunately I have a hunch aswell that not adding GA does indeed negatively affects SEO. How would it be possible to prove/disprove this?

mojuba 7y ago
Experiment with your own web sites? Create two of them with and without GA, possibly with different content because Google seems to be able to detect duplication, then try to promote both (this is the difficult part of course) and compare.
- mmahemoff 7y ago
  It's hard to do any kind of objective comparison like this when it comes to SEO. It takes months to see any effect and even then you will have to speculate. You could try to remove GA from half the pages on an existing site one day and see if those subsequently drop more, if you have enough pages to experiment with.
  - mojuba 7y ago
    There is some evidence that older pages (>10 years old) drop out if they don't use any of Google's plugins. I think it was Tim Bray who was one of the first who noticed [1] I also found another case of a lot of un-googleable reddit pages from only 5 years ago. They just don't exist on Google anymore even though they are linked from e.g. peoples profiles who commented there. Someone decided that Reddit is not important, or maybe there's some broader exclusion criteria in place. [1] https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is-losing-its-memory https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is...
    - mmahemoff 7y ago
      I didn't read the comments, but the article didn't mention anything about Google plugins, did it? I suppose it's possible Google used GA stats and maybe even content fingerprinting to determine if certain pages should be indexed, or reminded from the index, and how often to crawl them if indexed.
      - mojuba 7y ago
        True, I think it was in various discussions here on HN including maybe under Tim Bray's article too. Same kind of rumors were circulating regarding AMP. There is still no direct evidence that Google's web plugins matter, but at least it seems like spammy websites that are fully equipped with Google's stuff get favorable ranking. And vice versa, you won't see high ranking spammy results that are not crammed with GA, Google Fonts and what not.
OnlineHeaven 7y ago
Adding Google Analytics is probably good for escaping the "Google Sandbox." There's clearly some sort of review process (algorithm or manual review) before a website starts ranking well in the Google SERPs.

OnlineHeaven 7y ago

Yeah that's a tough one because there aren't many "legitimate" competitors to GA other than clicky from what I know. Sounds like an opportunity.

d33 7y ago

Surprised nobody mentioned Matomo Analytics yet: https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/ It's FLOSS, comes both self-hosted and as a paid service and it's pretty good. Perhaps good enough for your use case?

stilisstuk 7y ago
Many government sites uses matomo in Denmark. It's good.
kpennell 7y ago
thanks for mentioning
marcus_holmes 7y ago
thanks for the tip :)
nathcd 7y ago
Or, we could stop sending people programs to track themselves on their own computers. Just use your server logs. I don't care how much of an inconvenience it is, you should never have started doing any client-side tracking in the first place.
- smashingfiasco 7y ago
  I concur.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  But if I do that then how am I going to convince investors to give me so much funding I can sell my company and retire?
- pythux 7y ago
  Great point! We wrote about how we're doing it on whotracks.me a while ago, if anyone is wondering how that could work: https://whotracks.me/blog/private_analytics.html https://whotracks.me/blog/private_analytics.html

golemiprague 7y ago

My main concern with GA is that many people put an ad blocker on their browser and it blocks the GA script. The alternative is to channel this data via our servers but then I might as well just use my own database to collect this info, why give it to Google? There are similiar open source tools which are good enough.