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My site was disallowed from advertising on Google when using Matomo analytics
- arkitaip 5y agoClearly Google was kind enough to identify the adtracking as a type of privacy-hostile malware. Now, if only they could extend the courtesy to the horror show that is Google Analytics.
- jlkuester7 5y agoThis is the correct take. As a software developer I recognize the value in understanding the usage patterns for the software you develop, but good grief we have gone off the deep end in the analytics/tracking pool...
- evolve2k 5y agoSurely this is anti-competitive.
- rubatuga 5y agoLocked out from an ad platform for simply using another competitor, not even related to ads?
- jlkuester7 5y agoLeveraging your monopoly in one sector (ads) to block your consumers from using a competing service in another sector? Seems like a text-book case of anti-competitive practice. (Of course in this specific case it does seem likely this is a false positive from the AI and not a deliberate strategy, so probably not something to build your anti-trust case on.)
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI keep wondering how long until Google page ranks are "adjusted" when using GA (because GA is slow, so GA pages are penalised at the moment, and clearly Google wants people to use GA so they need to fix that).
- eli 5y agoNot currently possible under their privacy policy
- DethNinja 5y agoI think Google tag manager might be faster than analytics , just use GTM and allow analytics. Keep in mind you kinda need to do something like this if you want to comply with GDPR or CPPA as you need user consent to enable analytics.
- DeliriumTrigger 5y agomatomo had some "bad" releases so maybe one with a serious bug triggered this and not the program per se.
- funshed 5y agoMatomo 4.3.1. (latest version) with no warnings on "System Check" but interesting idea.
- rbinv 5y agoI don't think this is actually related to Matomo being a competitor. Malware is much more likely, making this a non-issue. Could be a false positive, too.
- funshed 5y agoPlausable but I do not imagine that to be the case. It was recently updated and Matomo has a self-diagnostic includeing "File integrity", it has no warnings. Its also on its own small droplet, so somewhat isoloated. The Google Rep was clear it was not allowed also (though perhaps misinformed).
- lolinder 5y agoHe was communicating poorly, but I don't read that as him stating Google's official stance on Matomo. I read it as him saying "those links are not allowed because our link scanner says so, and that's all I know."
- oauea 5y agoThen why would a Google worker (not a machine, but a real life human) tell this person that using their competitor is not allowed? Did you read the screenshot?
- sodality2 5y agoThe Google worker said "x url is not allowed". It says nothing of using Matomo. The URL is to the js which google must have considered malicious.
- oauea 5y agoThe user explained it was Matomo, a Google competitor, and the worker responded with "No, that is not allowed.". Seems to leave absolutely no room for interpretation. It is not about the URL, it is about Matomo.
- 5y ago
- Jyaif 5y agotl;dr The person wants to include JS from a company that shipped malware. Concludes that you can't use Google Analytics competitors.
- tyingq 5y agoGoogle previously admitted it was a false positive and fixed it on their end. Matomo points out the original source that was errantly marked as malware here: https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-google-matomo-javascript-is-a-malware/35131 https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-goo...
- funshed 5y agoSource? I cant see anything..
- rexreed 5y agoThis seems to be an old issue with Matomo javascript that was resolved? See below: https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-google-matomo-javascript-is-a-malware/35131 https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-goo...
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago'This turns out to be an existing problem, dating back to 2019 when Google said it was fixed.' (Only tweeted 4 minutes before your post, easily missed)
- zx2391 5y agoA story from a decade back. Setup a site, low traffic, not much change over months. Added AdSense, within days traffic increased. I was thinking, yeah Google, why not turn the knobs a tiny bit - people will hardly notice and it's win-win for both of us anyway.
- abraae 5y agoI can't disagree with what you observed. However these stories involving some mega corp as an evil actor always raise the question: what's to be gained, and what's the risk. As soon as some manager instructs someone beneath them to do bad stuff, some kind of trail exists. The downside to mega corp is enormous if that comes to light. Imagine if Google is caught in the act of pulling some shady shit like that. The law suits, loss of trust and prestige. The personal exposure to the individuals involved. All it takes is for some underling to pop up with a smoking gun email, a recorded conversation on their IPhone, a receipt from a shady transaction. Then it's immense risk and a big cover up needed to try and save things. I don't doubt that shady shit happens, passed down the chain Mafia boss style so there's no paper trail, even at Google. But does that lead to actual dodgy acts like prioritizing AdSense customers in search results? How many engineers would need to be brought along for the ride for that to happen? How many of them are potential whistle blowers? For all of these reasons (and perhaps naively) I like to think that corporate corruption is not this overt. Tldr; I hope you were mistaken and it was purely a coincidence.
- johnchristopher 5y agoYour arguments are sound but then I think about diesel gate and well... corporate corruption is a thing.
- ethbr0 5y agoStep 1: Communicate to team that KVMs are of the utmost importance. Step 2: Design and implement sufficiently complex algorithm that behavior isn't easily reasoned from changes Step 3: Iterate through random walk of changes to optimize KVMs Step 4: Land on parent's behavior, without any attributable decision or paper trail
- 5y ago
- oauea 5y agoAh, Google is having another go at anti-competitive behavior it seems. Do be evil?
- axiosgunnar 5y agoA clear violation of anti-trust abuse of a dominant market position if I ever saw one!
- macspoofing 5y ago>A clear violation of anti-trust abuse of a dominant market position if I ever saw one! Is it that clear? What if these links were flagged for other reasons, or erroneously? Or are we just taking headlines at face-value?
- axiosgunnar 5y agoIt was deliberately flagged by Google because it was their decision to use an algorithm for flagging to increase profits by having to pay less humans, so it makes no difference if the actual flag=true operation was performed automatically. We need to start making faceless multinational corporations responsible for the choices that their AI makes for them. I cannot build a bridge and let AI decide how strong it should be and if it crashes, be like „welp sorry it was the AIs fault, we didnt spent on actual engineers to save money, I promise the next bridge will be stronger“.
- ant6n 5y ago> I promise the next bridge will be stronger Wait, the faceless multinational corporations promise to improve their AIs? Isnt it mostly a shrug, if they react at all?
- yanderekko 5y ago>It was deliberately flagged by Google because it was their decision to use an algorithm for flagging to increase profits by having to pay less humans, so it makes no difference if the actual flag=true operation was performed automatically. I'm quite sure it does from an anti-trust perspective. >I cannot build a bridge and let AI decide how strong it should be and if it crashes, be like „welp sorry it was the AIs fault, we didnt spent on actual engineers to save money, I promise the next bridge will be stronger“. Under some circumstances this will be fine. Using AI doesn't change negligence rules into strict liability rules, it just changes the criteria through which negligence will be determined. It seems likely that most jurors would not be as cantankerous in their outlook towards AI as you are, though.
- swiley 5y agoSCRAPE THE SERVER LOGS, THEY CAN'T TELL AND YOUR USERS WILL THANK YOU.
- eli 5y agoBecause I’d get wildly incorrect analytics that way from all the bots with bogus user agents.
- swiley 5y agoYou don't think nojs and librejs are skewing your client side analytics?
- jaywalk 5y agoNo, not at all. You can't even compare the tiny amount of people using plugins like that to the vast amount of info you can lose out on by doing no client-side analytics.
- KronisLV 5y agoI doubt they would in any significant way, since the majority of users have JavaScript enabled in their browsers. [1][2] Furthermore, if you look at the LibreJS project page [3] and then click on the link of the Firefox extension [4], the user count will explain that the vast majority of people on the web won't have it installed and perhaps won't even have heard of it. If anything, extensions like uBlock Origin [5] would be of more concern in regards to the client side analytics, since they usually have more downloads. In summary: unless you're running a site that's tailored particularly for free software enthusiasts or the crowd that are overwhelmingly likely to disable JS, then no, it won't matter. Sources: [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9478737/browser-statistics-on-javascript-disabled [2] https://deliberatedigital.com/blockmetry/javascript-disabled [3] https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ [4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/librejs/ [5] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin
- throwaway2048 5y ago
- cerved 5y agoI think you're reading far too much into this. You spoke with a support agent who is checking the status of your AdSense campaign. That system has flagged links on your website as 'malicious'. The agent is simply telling you the links are 'not allowed' because the system has flagged them. Ie. you're not allowed to run AdSense on a site with flagged links. I'm 99% sure this has nothing do with you using a GA alternative.
- funshed 5y agoIt's fair to think "dont be evil" Google would not and it was flagged erroneously. Yet history shows this has been an issue since 2019 and was said to be resolved in 2020. Though apparently not (or it was rolled back). Though to be clear the "not allowed" was a response to the reply that it was links to a Google Analystics Competitor. That may well be down to further training being required but the opportunity was given to clarify and not taken. In the general sense, the intent may not have been malign but the system needs fixing regardless of Google's intent.
- cerved 5y agoI mean you're writing with a chat support agent. Presumably, you're not spending remotely enough money to even be communicating with an agent who is hired by google. Support people are busy, dealing with all kinds of bullshit, with very little time. Frankly I think it's a bit of dick move that you censored your website but didn't bother censoring the guys name.
- callahad 5y agoAre they reading too much into it? Of course the support agent has no agency, but it's not like Adam can appeal to a higher authority. Thus, for him, he truly cannot advertise on Google while using Matomo. The effect is real, regardless of whether it was intentional.
- jsnell 5y agoYes, they clearly are reading too much into it. The title of this thread isn't "Adam cannot advertise on Google while using Matomo". It is making a much more widely scoped claim on multiple axes, which seems to be based purely on this interaction with a support agent.
- kactus 5y agoI use CloudFlare Analytics and I had no issues running Google Ads.
- woutr_be 5y agoI still don’t know if I trust CloudFlare Analytics. The numbers I see there are widely different from numbers on GA or alternatives.
- HappyTypist 5y agoNeeds 2019 tag.
- funshed 5y agoThis is happened today.. (I later found out that it also was an issue in 2019)
- theandrewbailey 5y agoThe tweet is from a few hours ago, which was in 2021.
- geofft 5y agoThis feels a little silly, but, is the scan based on the literal strings "matomo.php" and "matomo.js"? If so, why not (ask the vendor to) rename the files?
- soared 5y ago@dang This is not true. What actions are we taking to curb misinformation on this site? This is the issue I have with Twitter - there is no room for discussion. Literally part of my job trouble is troubleshooting creative disapprovals from vendors like google, Microsoft, at&t, etc. Errors like this happen all the time. I very regularly get errors that I can just resubmit to resolve, or reach out to the vendor and have them resolved. My employer runs ads for thousands of businesses, many of whom are using GA competitors, and we’ve /never/ had this issue. If I had a way to crawl client sites and identify the vendors they use, I would provide a huge list of counter examples. (I work at a dsp)
- lainga 5y agoMisinformation? Do you think the screenshot from TFA has been actively manipulated? I don't think the title is true either, and should be changed. But that's not misinformation... it's a petulant reading of a statement by a Google employee which most of us take as bogus.
- cerved 5y agoYou don't even know the guy is employed at Google. Tons of support is outsourced
- soared 5y agoYeah this is kind of semantics but by definition this is misinformation, but definitely not disinformation (which requires active manipulation). This post is to me pretty squarely a false rumor made to elicit suspicion and fear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation
- rchaud 5y agoWhat you're describing sound like normal bugs. Have any of your links been specifically flagged by Customer Support and said to be impermissible?
- Splendor 5y ago> there is no room for discussion I can hear you.
- soared 5y agoThis is a customer service rep who obviously doesn’t understand the issue at hand and this thread is jumping to comically massive conclusions.
- pavel_lishin 5y agoAnd yet, the end result is that OP can't advertise on Google if they're using a Google Analytics competitor. Whether through incompetence or malice, the end result is still the same.
- soared 5y agoOr it’s an error that will be resolved, which would be a different end result.
- dawnerd 5y agoThis is simply not true otherwise literally every site advertising on Google would be in violation.
- funshed 5y agoDo new AdWords accounts have stricter checks? This was brand new.
- stoev 5y agoThere is a more egregious example of Google abusing its dominance with Google Analytics that people often don’t talk about. With Google Analytics, they offer a free service. Obviously, competitors can’t do that if their business is solely analytics and they don’t have other ways to monetise the service. That’s not the problem. The problem is how Google then use that free service to gain an advantage with their core money-making business - AdWords and DV360: As anyone in the industry knows, due to many factors (including different attribution methodologies), ad platforms show significantly different results from analytics platforms. The discrepancies easily reach into the double-digit percentages. Any discrepancy of such magnitude is concerning to an advertiser running paid ads. The same discrepancy exists between Google AdWords and Google Analytics too. Except when you integrate the two. Then, Google AdWords data are plugged directly into Google Analytics, eliminating the discrepancy rate and making it seem to any advertiser as if Google AdWords is a far more reliable traffic source then any of their competitors. It would be very difficult to extrapolate the monetary value of what Google have earned doing this. It is a much more sophisticated and hard to detect example of dominance abuse.
- cerved 5y agoThis. The discrepancy between GA and our data was always something I had to adress back when I sold AdTech.