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All of that can be done with local server logs,complete with pretty graphs and reports.

by rfrey 7y ago

ryanmercer 7y ago
Or with a couple of mouse clicks it can be done with GA. Most people don't want to stare at lines of code, write cod, and fiddle around in logs for hours and hours. I have literally no idea how to extract that data in a comparable fashion and it would likely take me many hours of reading and trying to copy paste random bits of code I find in articles together to attempt to do the same. Obviously the company in question should have someone capable of doing that but most smaller companies and small business website owners don't, hiring someone to create that would cost money. Stuff like GA you can copy paste an identifier or line of code, make it live and you're done. You now have a bookmark you can go to and see lots of actionable data in a nice visual form. Most people don't care about a website tracking their OS/location/time spent on change etc so why would I, or someone else, put a bunch of extra work into fashioning something from scratch when there's a perfectly usable product that takes seconds to deploy and is easily blocked by those that don't want you to easily access that information about them? If you need a knife most people would buy a knife. They would not buy a length of steel, cut it to rough shape, file or grind it down to the final shape, then spend an hour or more putting an edge on it with wet stones. Besides, the people that don't want tracked by Google are probably already blocking google via software and/or hardware solutions.
at_a_remove 7y ago
I am out of that game. Once upon a time, I labored over WebTrends for about a hundred different sites. It was not a great time. I am not sure what would be a good replacement for Google Analytics these days but I had an absolutely terrible time with WebTrends and server-side logs. I was pretty doubtful about the results produced, as well.
UncleMeat 7y ago
And then crawlers completely mess up your data. And it’s another thing to maintain and process.

All of that can be done with local server logs,complete with pretty graphs and reports.

by rfrey 7y ago

All of that can be done with local server logs,complete with pretty graphs and reports.

Or with a couple of mouse clicks it can be done with GA. Most people don't want to stare at lines of code, write cod, and fiddle around in logs for hours and hours. I have literally no idea how to extract that data in a comparable fashion and it would likely take me many hours of reading and trying to copy paste random bits of code I find in articles together to attempt to do the same. Obviously the company in question should have someone capable of doing that but most smaller companies and small business website owners don't, hiring someone to create that would cost money. Stuff like GA you can copy paste an identifier or line of code, make it live and you're done. You now have a bookmark you can go to and see lots of actionable data in a nice visual form. Most people don't care about a website tracking their OS/location/time spent on change etc so why would I, or someone else, put a bunch of extra work into fashioning something from scratch when there's a perfectly usable product that takes seconds to deploy and is easily blocked by those that don't want you to easily access that information about them? If you need a knife most people would buy a knife. They would not buy a length of steel, cut it to rough shape, file or grind it down to the final shape, then spend an hour or more putting an edge on it with wet stones. Besides, the people that don't want tracked by Google are probably already blocking google via software and/or hardware solutions.

at_a_remove 7y ago

I am out of that game. Once upon a time, I labored over WebTrends for about a hundred different sites. It was not a great time. I am not sure what would be a good replacement for Google Analytics these days but I had an absolutely terrible time with WebTrends and server-side logs. I was pretty doubtful about the results produced, as well.

UncleMeat 7y ago

And then crawlers completely mess up your data. And it’s another thing to maintain and process.