Have you stopped using Google Analytics (or replaced it with a faster alternative)?

[CTXMedia]

I'm currently testing CDNs, DNS services, etc. in an effort to speed up my sites and have always, without really questioning it, added GA to my sites. However, there does appear to be an page loading cost to having GA enabled and I'm not sure I'm seeing much benefit from it since I don't often reference the data (an occasional peek at visitor metrics is about all really).

Have any of you stopped using Google Analytics or replaced it with a faster alternative?

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Terror]

replaced analytics with http://piwik.org/

 

[Freelancer]

Had Google Analytics on three platforms, removed them entirely. Google Analytics only helps Google and the NSA.

 

[orange7]

Piwik ftw.

 

[rdn]

Google Analytics only helps Google and the NSA.

Is this really true?
What if you use Adsense?

 

[Freelancer]

Is this really true?
What if you use Adsense?

Google is an open door to your website. As an American based company it falls under the Patriot Act. Google is a Backdoor. Admins should do research that and be aware.

 

[MattW]

I've just removed GA from my site, and replaced with piwik. It's stopped the really annoying flash during page reload

 

[CTXMedia]

Ironically, Adsense ads seem to be loading quicker with GA removed ...

I'm turning GA off for the time being. Whilst the stats can be interesting in a spend-hours-clicking-and-going-hmmmm kind of way, I don't use them to influence or leverage anything, such as own ad sales for example, so they're adding an overhead for no real benefit.

I've always got the option of adding piwik later if I find I need more detailed info.

 

[eva2000]

I've just removed GA from my site, and replaced with piwik. It's stopped the really annoying flash during page reload

interesting i actually have both on my forums GA + piwik + adsense

 

[ReeseNator]

For me, I've been using CloudFlare's analytics coupled with WebMaster Tools.

 

[AzzidReign]

I've put so much time into creating GA dashboards, so I'm not clicking a million times to see what I want to see, and so I can filter out data that is irrelevant. There's a dashboard that I share with potential advertisers so they can see the traffic, pageviews, demographics, etc. and another dashboard for my use, to see how much traffic we are getting and where the popular threads are so we can promote them (with popular threads, we like to see what is trending for the day and then if it is a new thread, we promote that on social media). I'm not sure moving over would be easy but definitely looks like piwik has a nice system!

 

[Fred.]

Google already knows everything about my sites, I'm using Google Apps, Adsense, Adwords, Analytics,Webmaster Tools,Google+
I'm not paranoid about it, I'm not doing anything wrong so there is no reason for fear. I have so much data in Google Analytics and other Google services that I don't want to throw away.

 

[beanfan78]

This is extremely interesting to come across. I had never really looked at Piwiks, but now that I have, I am going to give this a shot. Also interesting is using Amazon S3 logs with it. There is some real flexibility on this that I can't achieve with GA. Glad this was thrown out there for conversation.

 

[Dakis]

What kind of things can you do with piwik that you can't do in GA?

 

[Liam W]

I've never really used Google Analytics, always used Piwik.

My Piwik: https://piwik.xf-liam.com

 

[Dakis]

I don't see anything public there, it's asking for a sign in

 

[Mouth]

replaced it with a faster alternative?

replaced analytics with http://piwik.org/

But is it faster or more optimised?
Both use async js, and I don't see why self-hosted would be faster than GA?