[svlug] Web statistics

[Brian De Smet]

--On Tuesday, June 03, 2008 11:03 AM -0700 Chris DiBona <cdibona at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> Adblock generally doesn't block GA. GA is designed to track user
> activity, including visits, browers capabilities, geo-location of
> visitiors, referrers and more. I does requrie your visitons have
> javascript enabled, but it is the rare person who doesn't have that
> turned on.
>
> It's easy and free to use. (free as in beer)

  Who uses Adblock against Google Analytics you ask?  Me, a whole pile of 
my friends, and many people that have concerns about centralized databases. 
This isn't to say that the core code behind Google Analytics isn't great. 
It certainly seems to be the best javascript based website tracking system 
out there.  I would love to deploy Urchin somewhere, but alas the cost is 
higher than my needs are.

  And a note from a soapbox; Consider the possibility that free services 
are perhaps not as free as they first appear.  Perhaps you are paying for 
the service with the data you provide them.  Sure they are providing you a 
service to that analyzes that data and shows you pretty graphs.  But they 
are also hoarding that data and using it for any number of other purposes.

--Brian De Smet