benhoyt.com
Web and SaaS
web analytics
SHOW HN2019
475points
137comments
#36of 2,195 in 2019
Top 2%of 2019 by points
How HN took it
DebatedReal support and real criticism
10 positive, 16 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 11 critical, out of 37 comments about the project. Thread score 0.00.
Idea: 8 for, 4 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstExecution: 1 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Log parsing is a sound, old-school way to measure traffic
From 1 comment
Love what you are doing here. A few points: 1. I would rename the pixel.png to something like image.png. Never call your script anything like tracking, analytics, or pixel when…
AdriaanvRossum on HN
Avoids ad blockers and works without JavaScript
From 2 comments
> Obviously with log parsing you don’t get as much information as a JavaScript-heavy, Google Analytics-style system. There’s no screen sizes, no time-on-page metrics, etc. But…
octref on HN“Most tracking systems, including Google Analytics, don’t work at all without JavaScript.“ I have found solutions with GA, matomo, fantom all to have image based solutions that…
tdhz77 on HN
Objections
Ad-blocker bypass and tracking framing raise privacy concerns
From 3 comments
> Never call your script anything like tracking, analytics, or pixel when you don't want to be blocked by ad blockers. But this is a tracking script, no? If I were you I'd keep…
xiaq on HNI don't think what you're doing is the end of the world, but answer this is extremely patronizing. You've basically said you know some users block your stuff, but you think they…
notafraudster on HNI'm fine with people being patronizing towards whiny, entitled users who think they have a right to use any website they want on their terms. If you don't like someone running…
jamiequint on HN
Raw logs are less accurate than GA for real users and bots
From 1 comment
This looks like a solution in need of a problem. Previously I had tried some similar things at scale, mainly because I wanted upsampled reports and GA charges $100,000 for…
redm on HN
Requests
Server-side tracking for GitHub Pages or Netlify
From 2 comments
> Obviously with log parsing you don’t get as much information as a JavaScript-heavy, Google Analytics-style system. There’s no screen sizes, no time-on-page metrics, etc. But…
octref on HN> I would really love it if GitHub pages or Netlify can provide some simple server-side tracking. It doesn't match GA but in some cases that's all I need. That would be a great…
benhoyt on HN
Add user flow and conversion tracking
From 2 comments
You don’t track user’s flow on site? like conversion for ecommerce, bounce rate, time on page, etc.?
MuffinFlavored on HNNot at the moment. We will implement tracking user flow with in a privacy minded way. I asked Hacker News a while ago if they would think it was privacy friendly [1] To be clear…
harianus on HN
Questions
Does dropping GA affect Google Search rankings?
From 1 comment
Has anyone done research whether stopping using Google Analytics impacts Google Search rankings?
nnx on HN
Is there keyword or search phrase data for organic traffic?
From 1 comment
I could not find organic traffic details like keywords that bring visitors to the site?
pknerd on HN
Alternatives named
Matomo
From 2 comments
Why not use a self-hosted analytics software like https://matomo.org/ ?
abhin4v on HNI also would suggest looking into Matomo (https://matomo.org/) if your want an open source analytic service to replace Google Analytics.
telaelit on HN
GoAccess
From 2 comments
If you take the trouble to host everyting on a stack you actually control, raw server logs and GoAccess is a highly capable and for most cases sufficient monitoring tool. I use…
interfixus on HNI like GoAccess because it works well with multiple vhosts, if you have a lot of sites and want to see relative busyness. Also you can see if any particular site or individual…
Neil44 on HN
AWStats
From 2 comments
For those of you hosting on your own server, this is a PSA that awstats is still working. It reads server logs and makes little graphs via a cron job. It's fun to have analytics…
acidburnNSA on HNI never moved from awstats. It still works.
pmlnr on HN
Snowplow
From 2 comments
(data engineer here) Nice post! It's always fun reading about people being creative and challenging the analytics status quo (aka GA). Besides the joy of doing it yourself,…
mejakethomas on HNi’ve heard snowplow is good for this
arjunbanker on HN