I can't say i would agree with most of what is written here...
It’s owned by Google - yes it is. There is always an owner behind every product. That does not mean it is bad..
It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed - with today's speeds 50kb is not a problem at all, even in remote areas with poor networks.
It’s overkill for the majority of site owners - there are a few basic metrics that are used in many ways, but essentially it collects when a user lands on a page, the exact time, the time it switched a page, some information about your os and that is pretty much it.
It requires an extensive privacy policy - if you are not connecting the data with an actual name or other PII it doesn't have anything to do with GDPR.
It worsens your user experience due to the annoying prompts - as any other tool that needs cookies to work. CRM? Marketing automation? ...
It’s blocked by many so the data is not very accurate - I don't recollect that adblockers block GA. I have AdBlock and GA cookies are stored normally (just checked). Even if it did block it would be per user, so the data would be missing that group.. but it still would be good data.
It’s abused by referral spam that skews the data - that can happen to any tracking software, but it is easy to detect them and exclude. I think it is mostly happening automatically.
It’s a proprietary product so you need to put your trust in Google - well yes, bu on the other hand, Google is constantly controlled and has much to lose...
I ma not saying Google is all sunshine and rainbows... there might be better alternatives for some users.
@markosaric
thanks for the good summary of the reasons against Google Analytics. I don't agree 100% with every single one of them, but I'd like to make a point to that blocking GA thing. If you compare, for example, figures from the Acquisitions report with other sources (like a bill from a social media service - which hopefully is correct) you recognize that a bunch of sessions are missing in GA. Of course it depends on the type of your audience if they use blockers or not. Anyway, Aleksandar, some blockers support blocking GA already by their basic setting. Moz.com once ran a test about how much traffic you might lose for which reason. That was in 2018. According to the marketing team in my company the “dark traffic” is continuously growing.
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I can't say i would agree with most of what is written here...
I ma not saying Google is all sunshine and rainbows... there might be better alternatives for some users.
@markosaric thanks for the good summary of the reasons against Google Analytics. I don't agree 100% with every single one of them, but I'd like to make a point to that blocking GA thing. If you compare, for example, figures from the Acquisitions report with other sources (like a bill from a social media service - which hopefully is correct) you recognize that a bunch of sessions are missing in GA. Of course it depends on the type of your audience if they use blockers or not. Anyway, Aleksandar, some blockers support blocking GA already by their basic setting. Moz.com once ran a test about how much traffic you might lose for which reason. That was in 2018. According to the marketing team in my company the “dark traffic” is continuously growing.