Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc and blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).
It's not like GA is the only way to gather statistics, there are other vendors and even the access logs for your server itself.
I'm not willing to let Google follow me everywhere on the internet and if that is detrimental to the sites I visit then they are welcome to block me if they detect that I'm blocking GA.
When you run a website, you have two choices: spend a bunch of time implementing log analysis and paying for all the storage necessary, or using GA, which already exists and is free. If log analytics isn't my core business, why should I spend time implementing it?
And if you choose GA, you accept that some people will block it, the same way they might block your javascript, your cookies, your css, your images, or anything else they don't want to download.
No, you should buy something that does log analytics for you without shafting your viewers. The existence of deceptive-but-gratis services like GA means there is almost no market for proper analysis software, which is a scandal.
There is a very good reason why GA is free to use. It involves building profiles of your users for Google's benefit. Don't be surprised or upset if some of your users don't want to participate in that privacy shit storm.
I used one site which would throw an javascript exception and break because it called part of google analytics from some other function that was needed to make the site work. I ended up opening it up in a private browsing session, and I've got my script blocker disabled there.
Actually, because of this, I tend to temporarily disable blocking at the moment of payment, because there are too many redirects and reloads happening at that time to reliably use a blocker. It partially defeats blocking, but at least they aren't tracking me during regular browsing.
The travel sites I saw blocked didn't fail because of GA blocking I believe, but they were depending on various other scripts. I believe they just had messy code that relied on callbacks from third party scripts -- some of which were blocked by uBlock.
Might be worthwhile finding a different online travel company, if they can't get this right I can't imagine what else they'll stuff up when you make a booking!
Many sites? I've been blocking GA through ghostery for years and haven't had any problem ever. Only problem with Ghostery i've noticed is blocking Adobe Typekit and some other UI-framework i can't remember the name of, and that is extreeemly rare. Besides, as many others have said, if a site is stupid enough to rely on a third party server for analytics that is their problem, not mine, there are plenty of good analytics alternatives that can be hosted by yourself easily, and there are plenty of good websites out there that i can visit instead if one is not working without GA.
>which is the only way they make money other than ads.
Yeah.
> So, you use the site resources
Yeah.
>don't see ads
Yeah.
> don't add to their user/page view numbers.
Yeah.
>Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc
Yeah.
Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse my trust and displayed popup ads. I wouldn't be doing this if ads were actually targeted (lol jk). Early ads providers fucked it up for everyone. Not only do I hate the very principle of ads, I go out of my way to avoid them.
And most of all, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't Google Analytics. Use piwik, use whatever you want as long as it's selfhosted and doesn't report to <gigantic database of users> and I will allow it. After all, I have no way of knowing if you're selling my data back anyways. It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. You want stats ? Use your own server.
Good. I don't want to contribute to your analytics. I don't want ads. I just want to browse the web without being tracked. I don't care if that means you can't pay for your site, other sites will spring up that can without annoying users with ads and without tracking them.
The "other site" in the area I'm operating in is Google. So the situation is more like "other sites will continue to dominate by cross-subsidising from their core business, namely annoying users with ads and tracking them".
No, he wants free content without any convenience to him. He doesn't care about the so-called bigger picture, just the instant gratification he's been entitled to.
piwik is essentially a self-hosted GA. So it uses JS (like GA) but tracks to a DB on your own server so the data on your visit remains private between you and the site-owner (rather than also being provided to a third-party like Google)
What has choosing what you download got to do with making a principled stand? It's like some people think that blocking ads is bad manners. I don't get it.
It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. Every person that gets the paper without the advertisements affects the newspaper bottom line. It affects it in a small way, but all together they add up. The newspaper functions because advertisers pay them, and if there's no reason for advertisers to expect their ads are seen, then there's no reason to continue paying.
If web ads were more like newspaper ads, I think I would find them more agreeable.
Newspaper ads don't animate and distract me from what I'm reading. When I flip to a different page in the paper I don't have to "wait ten seconds" to start reading. I've never had an ad spontaneously appear in front of the newspaper article I'm reading.
Newspaper ads don't track me, and no matter how sketchy the ad is, it doesn't put me a couple of clicks away from installing malware on my computer.
> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.
What you've just described is me, taking the content from your site, stripping out the ads, and re-posting it on the Internet for others to consume sans advertisements.
This is very clearly different from a single person using ad blockers on their own computers, and you know it.
However, this is equivalent to everyone who reads you newspaper cutting out the ads from their own newspaper before reading it. Which, perhaps, should tell you something about the ads in your paper.
True, it is bad for the advertiser and the ad hosting site. But it is good for the person annoyed by the ads. There is no objective value in blocking ads, it depends on the party. Since there is no objective valuation, it is not bad manners; it is merely an ability of consumers that is undesirable to advertisers and the ad hosting companies.
> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.
Nice try at an analogy, but removing the ads from free newspapers and giving the results to people could be seen as conspiracy harming the newspaper, because there would be party doing the removing and taking over the distribution. With online ads, nothing of this sort happens, because the consumer requests the newspaper company - not some other ad-removing party - for the newspaper article, the newspaper company sends it to him with hope he will pay attention to ads and the consumer displays only that part of the sent document which he deems worthy of his attention. He does this with help of his computer in which he is entitled to process and filter information in any way he deems useful. No organized action destroying the business is happening, the consumer himself removes the part he does not want on his computer, he does not remove ads for other people. This is virtually the same as when the person buys a newspaper in store and skips reading the ads, which everybody who would read the newspaper is entitled to do. All people are entitled to filter the information other people, companies and government try to feed them, irrespective of the channel, be it paper, audiovisual channels or the Internet. Otherwise our brains would get really dumb from all the fatuous ads.
You're talking about the newspaper like it somehow has a right to exist. It doesn't. It is a business and whether it succeeds or fails depends on the value it adds to its customers. In this case its customers aren't the consumers, they are the advertisers, and from what you're saying, it sounds like the consumers are prepared to go to great lengths to rid themselves of the adverts, which suggests that the customers aren't getting much value from the newspaper.
If you're telling me that disabling ads is bad manners then I put it to you that attempting to deceive the advertisers about the value of their ads is also bad manners. In fact I'm starting to wonder if it isn't my moral obligation to block adverts in order to help advertisers save money they would have otherwise wasted.
I would pay the premium for newspapers without ads. In fact, I do -- I support news organizations that aren't driven by advertisement.
If you can't find a business model that doesn't antagonize me, then you haven't found a business model that I care to support. If capitalism is failing to provide us with even basic methods of producing quality works, then that's a problem we should tackle at a larger scale.
> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.
No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging. Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content.
Well, then the sites should buy a service that gives them more features. If the existence of GA means there is no market for such products, then GA should go away.
That's a pity. This gives me an extra reason not to use blocklists maintained by anyone but myself. (I currently don't use uBlock, but RequestPolicy + NoScript, but am considering switching.)
Would you block any analytics tracker - even one that didn't share data with 3rd parties? (i.e. a tracker that was purely to enable to site owners to gain insight into their visitors)
Me too. If I'm visiting a website, I don't mind the operator of the site knowing about my visit or getting some basic stats about usage. It's when they compare notes to make a larger map of my visits across the web that I start getting nervous. And when they use that data to target advertising to me, I start blocking them.