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>I want to know how many people visited my website. So does every website You can do that easily without third-party tracking cookies.

jefftk 4y ago
Google Analytics doesn't use any third-party cookies; it uses first-party cookies only. [EDIT: this is too broad; see comments below] While the JS is loaded from a third-party origin, its notion of identity is entirely per-site. (Disclosure: I used to work on ads at Google)
- btdmaster 4y ago
  It seems certain features are restricted to third-party cookies: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection.... In practice though, moving from third-party to first-party is simply a way to reduce the probability that the spyware gets blocked by the user agent.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    > certain features are restricted to third-party cookies You're talking about the https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage#google_analytics_for_display_advertisers_-_cookie_usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... section, right? That's only for sites that are already using third-party cookies for advertising, has to be specifically enabled, and doesn't seem very applicable to our "know how many people visited my website" discussion? But my comment above was too broad, and I've edited it to point here. > moving from third-party to first-party GA, back to the Urchin days, has always been built around first-party cookies though.
    - btdmaster 4y ago
      > https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage#google_analytics_for_display_advertisers_-_cookie_usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... Is that the same as https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2700409 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2700409?
      - jefftk 4y ago
        I think so? It's about linking advertising activity (keyed by third party advertising cookies) with analytics activity (keyed by first party analytics cookies)
blooalien 4y ago
Indeed. You get that and so much more useful information for free in your web-server logfiles. Any half-decent web server log analyzer tool will classify and graph all the useful data in those log files and present it to you in a nice shiny web page or report document of some sort. No cookies required.
- azmodeus 4y ago
  You sound knowledge about using logfiles for analytics.Could you recommenda good stack to do this? I am assuming you need to do client side tracking for static pages though or you need to self host your static page.

jefftk 4y ago

Google Analytics doesn't use any third-party cookies; it uses first-party cookies only. [EDIT: this is too broad; see comments below] While the JS is loaded from a third-party origin, its notion of identity is entirely per-site. (Disclosure: I used to work on ads at Google)

btdmaster 4y ago
It seems certain features are restricted to third-party cookies: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection.... In practice though, moving from third-party to first-party is simply a way to reduce the probability that the spyware gets blocked by the user agent.
- jefftk 4y ago
  > certain features are restricted to third-party cookies You're talking about the https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage#google_analytics_for_display_advertisers_-_cookie_usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... section, right? That's only for sites that are already using third-party cookies for advertising, has to be specifically enabled, and doesn't seem very applicable to our "know how many people visited my website" discussion? But my comment above was too broad, and I've edited it to point here. > moving from third-party to first-party GA, back to the Urchin days, has always been built around first-party cookies though.
  - btdmaster 4y ago
    > https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage#google_analytics_for_display_advertisers_-_cookie_usage https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... Is that the same as https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2700409 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2700409?
    - jefftk 4y ago
      I think so? It's about linking advertising activity (keyed by third party advertising cookies) with analytics activity (keyed by first party analytics cookies)

blooalien 4y ago

Indeed. You get that and so much more useful information for free in your web-server logfiles. Any half-decent web server log analyzer tool will classify and graph all the useful data in those log files and present it to you in a nice shiny web page or report document of some sort. No cookies required.

azmodeus 4y ago
You sound knowledge about using logfiles for analytics.Could you recommenda good stack to do this? I am assuming you need to do client side tracking for static pages though or you need to self host your static page.