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Alternatives to Google Analytics

Statistics Suppliers

Article from ADMIN 37/2017

By Sandro Lucifora

Many companies that use Google Analytics to learn more about visitors to their websites worry about privacy issues. We looked at some useful alternatives.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, Google, as an Alphabet subsidiary, offers the Google Analytics online service for website traffic analysis. Although the website operator superficially reaps the primary benefits from this free service – which is why many companies add the Google script without closer examination – this does involve handing over a large amount of visitor data voluntarily to Google.

Focus on User Data

In addition to the free search engine, Alphabet offers the free Gmail email service, as well as Google Docs, a wide range of free office applications. The question is where the money comes from that gives the group the financial means to offer all its products free of charge. The answer is very simple: advertising.

To personalize and play out advertising in a better more targeted way, the group needs to know more about the user. What is the best way to discover the user's name, gender, and age? By offering a free service that requests precisely these data: Gmail. It is not just that Google gains knowledge of your personal data; Google's policies also allow it to examine email traffic. Google has built a habitat with all of its offerings, in which the collected data can be linked: the Google account. When you log in, you are providing a concentrated bundle of information. Often, users don't bother to log out of their Google accounts so that all searches carried out in Google are linked to the specific user account.

Free Services for Enterprises

The above offers are aimed primarily at individuals rather than companies. Of course, it is interesting for Google to know, with the ulterior motive of targeted advertising, who is looking for the company and who the company's customers are. What could be better than receiving the required data from the website visitors directly from the website operator itself?

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