Goodbye to Google Analytics

 

After almost a year of using Google Analytics and Matomo together, yesterday I disconnected Analytics from the blog for good.

I could have removed it much earlier, as for performance purposes it wasn't a very good idea to keep both JavaScript tracking codes running at the same time because of the impact on page load speed, although I managed to minimise it quite a lot.

Another reason for keeping it was that inexplicable feeling that I would miss some of what it had to offer. I can tell you that this was not the case.

Matomo On-Premise (self-hosted), well configured, gives no performance problems and if your hosting panel has Softaculous, it installs with three or four clicks.

Matomo. Performance metrics

Performance module. Note the fight against the 2.5 second load time barrier.

Reasons

It is free software and there is a community that contributes to improve its security and collaborate in its development.

But the main reason is privacy. Matomo takes this very seriously. I know that doing away with Analytics doesn't put an end to Google's incessant data scraping, as it will continue to steal data through Adsense, Gmail, etc., but I want to believe that preventing it from taking visitors' data is better than nothing.

Matomo Analytics was designed with privacy in mind. It can be configured to follow even the strictest privacy laws such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR. By using Matomo you ensure that all information is private, that it will only be in your hands and that your site respects the privacy of your visitors. With Matomo On-Premise you can even store only data from a specific country.

Matomo. Anonymize data

The source code of the software is open source, so hundreds of people have reviewed it to ensure that it is secure and keeps your data private.

Matomo Do Not Track

I don't want data

With Matomo, you don't leave any data in the hands of companies to be fiddled with. You are the sole owner and responsible.

I don't need that much data and I'm not interested in it. Generic data is enough for me, such as the number of daily visits, which pages are visited the most and the time spent on them, the countries from which they arrive and the performance metrics. Any other more personal, sensitive or historical data is not enough for me.

If I hurry, it might be interesting to know the referrer urls, but Matomo doesn't register them beyond search engines or social networks and without any reference other than the name of the search engine or social network. Nor does it register the keywords searched by users in search engines, for this they have a paid plugin.

As I don't want to keep even this minimum information, although I know it is useful to have historical metrics and to have elements for comparison, I prefer to delete them every two days, which is the minimum that can be configured.

Goodbye to Google Analytics

It is modular and very configurable. Matomo, although it seems a bit confusing at first, allows you to configure the dashboard to your liking.

Matomo board layouts

It can be extended by adding a large number of official plugins and others developed by the community. Many of them are free, although there are also paid plugins with special functions such as a heat map and other advanced tools,

This is how I have configured my Matomo board

In addition, with the self-installed version you can place your logo, use it as a "white label" or customise it for your clients, change its appearance a bit using some of its templates and, if you have enough knowledge, you can even design your own template.

Anyway, today I officially say goodbye to Google Analytics and take this opportunity to remind you that Matomo is not the only privacy-friendly alternative, there are many more.


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