New Options for Privacy with Google Analytics
Over at the Conversion Room Blog, Google announced a couple of ways for both end users and website owners can increase privacy of website analytic and statistic data from Google Analytics, a robust and widely popular web analytics tool to show how visitors engage with their website.
For website visitors, Google developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, to opt-out of their website visits being tracked by Google Analytics.
For website owners, Google is providing on their Code site, some methods to anonymise the IP address information sent to Google for geographic reports. The website owner can now set their data collection to only send a portion of this IP address information. This may have an impact on the accuracy of geographic data reports.
Should this worry marketers and those using stats?
You could say on one hand that this should worry marketers and product managers relying upon Google Analytics for decision making website analytic data, and on the other hand that the impact could be minimal. The average end user is not going to rush out and install the browser add-on, however, it is guaranteed that many will. While this may affect the ability to use their visits as a part of the analytic data from Google Analytics, other server tracking methods and systems are available. In fact, this may open up some additional business for other vendors that provide website statistics and analytic services, due to the possible concern of lack of insight into website data.
What to do next
I wouldn’t recommend giving up on Google Analytics. With the plethora of available information, the usefulness of the service, it is justifiable to keep it in your tool set.
Alternatives to Google Analytics
If you continue using Google Analytics, there are some alternatives that are a worthy look:
The list goes on, but these are a few of the most worthy mentions.
Inbound marketing is key
Continue focusing on inbound marketing and driving more leads to conversions through call to action, simplified usable design. Analytics are important, drive business decision, and should never put your website visitors at risk, or in a tizzy.
It’s probably time to take another good look at your privacy policy too, by the way.
(Photo credit: Karsten Schmidt)
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