What’s the latest recommendation for what to use besides Google Analytics? I don’t need most of what the dashboard gives me. I exclusively use Google Analytics to keep track of page views and referrers for some low-traffic sites, and everything else the dashboard provides I honestly find really creepy. The only thing keeping on Google Analytics is the free part.
back
6 comments
If you just want page views and referrers, then your webserver logs should have all the data you need already. There is no need to inject 3rd party JS or tracking pixels into your pages.
Personally I use GoAccess to visualise this data.
> GoAccess is an open source real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser.
> It provides fast and valuable HTTP statistics for system administrators that require a visual server report on the fly.
One of the places I use GA is on my blog which is hosted on Github Pages. There's no server (which I can access). Without js tracking (GA or not) what you've left with is something along the lines of putting it behind Cloudflare and seeing the little you get there.
Ironically on the other hand, services like Cloudflare are also what makes server logs less useful in some cases - users might not hit your servers at all for you to record them there.
I tested out Fathom and Plausible.io, and found that Plausible was more ahead in terms of features. With Fathom it wasn't possible to separate out events (click on link x, click on outbound links, download of a pdf, etc) you just got a big lump sum of how many events had occured in total. With Plausible I can see how all my events are doing, individual graphs and all. They're both of the same concept, they cost about the same, but basically Plausible lets you drill down into the data better so I'd personally recommend it over Fathom.
I'm using Cloudflare Web Analytics. It's free, offers you far less information but in exchange you offer your users much more privacy.
It's still a front-end analytics system which means you'll still lose information from users with tracker blockers, just like with GA.
Have you ever used that data for anything other than a passing curiosity? Most people using Analytics probably don't even need it.
The main reason I track page views and referrer data is to identify traffic spikes which are due to HN or twitter, to keep tabs on what’s being said about me or my work.
I really like Fathom Analytics. I only really care about the basics like unique visitor count and source, but they have more powerful features too. More importantly, they are GDPR compliant without the need for a cookie banner and recently added full EU isolation so they aren't sending any EU data to US servers.
Just block the EU and only worry about California's laws.