Hide Referrers? and Why I Hate Google Analytics
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianhttp://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/390320.html?style=mine
Suggestion on hiding referrers. I think that some form of this should be done, for privacy's sake. And that it should be opt-in. Other than that, the technical concerns are very complex, so I don't have much else to say.
In the course of discussing that suggestion, I mentioned that I hate using Google Analytics, although this is a result of my very specific needs. I'm sure that Google Analytics is great for analyzing e-commerce and professional usages, but I use it for one reason: because I want to see if anyone is linking to my posts. Now, Google Analytics is capable of doing this, but in a very inefficient way. Possibly, there's a way to make it do it more efficiently, but I don't know how to make it output that data, and GA is so complex that it's not intuitive to do so; which is not necessarily a flaw, but more of a sign that it's not suited to the avg noob.
Basically, I'm used to using Statcounter and the stats plugins I put in on my WP install. For those, there's a page that gives you a listing of referrer URLs, which is exactly what I want. But for GA, they unaccountably do not want to give you the individual URL. Everything is given by domain or subdomain under 'Traffic Sources.' I have to go through several clicks to get to traffic sources, and then I need to click once more to get to referrer path, which is what I want. Because a lot of my traffic comes from LJ or DW read pages, also, I have to click through those to figure out whether I'm actually getting a refer from a page (which is what I'm interested in) or a /read or /friends (which I'm not). If they gave the full path I wouldn't have to, but they don't.
Normally I would deal with this by opening up each subdomain's path listing in a separate tab, but I can't. The way the site is coded doesn't allow you to. Also, when I go back and forth, it tends to forget that I set it to a specific date range, and also forget that I told it to display 50 rows and not 10. I cannot figure out how to make it default to displaying a higher number of rows and remembering this. I much prefer the sort of interface that is coded all in HTML, even if it means a lack of the pretty graphs.
Suggestion on hiding referrers. I think that some form of this should be done, for privacy's sake. And that it should be opt-in. Other than that, the technical concerns are very complex, so I don't have much else to say.
In the course of discussing that suggestion, I mentioned that I hate using Google Analytics, although this is a result of my very specific needs. I'm sure that Google Analytics is great for analyzing e-commerce and professional usages, but I use it for one reason: because I want to see if anyone is linking to my posts. Now, Google Analytics is capable of doing this, but in a very inefficient way. Possibly, there's a way to make it do it more efficiently, but I don't know how to make it output that data, and GA is so complex that it's not intuitive to do so; which is not necessarily a flaw, but more of a sign that it's not suited to the avg noob.
Basically, I'm used to using Statcounter and the stats plugins I put in on my WP install. For those, there's a page that gives you a listing of referrer URLs, which is exactly what I want. But for GA, they unaccountably do not want to give you the individual URL. Everything is given by domain or subdomain under 'Traffic Sources.' I have to go through several clicks to get to traffic sources, and then I need to click once more to get to referrer path, which is what I want. Because a lot of my traffic comes from LJ or DW read pages, also, I have to click through those to figure out whether I'm actually getting a refer from a page (which is what I'm interested in) or a /read or /friends (which I'm not). If they gave the full path I wouldn't have to, but they don't.
Normally I would deal with this by opening up each subdomain's path listing in a separate tab, but I can't. The way the site is coded doesn't allow you to. Also, when I go back and forth, it tends to forget that I set it to a specific date range, and also forget that I told it to display 50 rows and not 10. I cannot figure out how to make it default to displaying a higher number of rows and remembering this. I much prefer the sort of interface that is coded all in HTML, even if it means a lack of the pretty graphs.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 06:27 am (UTC)Well, I don't care what people say to me, so maybe sometime I'll try asking about it. I wish I could use another service :/
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 01:58 pm (UTC)Analytics is cool, but definitely not designed for bloggers, or indeed companies that engage with bloggers. Plus I had to whitelist it for flashblock, I hate whitelisting sites in flashblock.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-25 07:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, analytics seems to be for e-commerce? Well, from my limited viewpoint, anyway.