#Offline Google Analytics

55 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

winged orchid
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Due to DMCA complaints the data collected by Google Analytics for years will become inaccessible this year and website owners are getting asked to backup the data if they wish to be able to compare new analytics with historical figures.

If you're nerdy enough to work with multiple websites you might see this becoming a good excuse to write a local reporting tool that can can generate charts from the backed up data?

Of course there's so many sites in the world using Google Analytics that there will inevitably be a bunch of people working on these self-help solutions and none of them can sell a solution easily because anyone "hosting" the DMCA data would be harassed?

I'm guessing there's stuff happening behind the scenes/in the community that is hard to hear about unless you're into marketing or a big time Google nerd? 🤔

devout slate
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I don't think DMCA is the correct law here

winged orchid
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Might not be the right one. I'm not good at buzz speak. 😄

devout slate
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Probably talking about the European GDPR?

winged orchid
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But that's the gist of it.
I can just picture a bunch of people working separately on fixes when it'd be clever to just wait for the best effort to get shared.
Ideally a solution would support new data too, so you don't have to make a report from the old data and then manually compare it to new data? 🤔

devout slate
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Or is this a copypasta

winged orchid
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I typed it.

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I am the source of this confusion. 😄

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Or I should say my lack of interest is likely the source. I don't really invest much concern in these rules until someone points out an actual issue, like data getting deleted. 😛

devout slate
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Where did you take the information from that Google has to delete old data? 💀

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Also there are plenty of options you can slefhost already

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(And plenty of European options available)

winged orchid
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Yeah now I dig a bit more it seems like Google suggests uploading the old data to a DB/query service they are running, but how long will they let you access all that data for free, why doesn't GDPR apply over there?
My guess is they are just scrambling and they don't really know how long it will take before someone finds a way to push the issue further for services offering general data processing with no specific features that violate laws?

devout slate
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Do you understand how GDPR works

winged orchid
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<- Canadian. All I know is that it makes a prompt for cookies that's damned annoying.

devout slate
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What happened before GDPR came out doesn't matter at all

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Then since it's been out you just need to get the user's consent before running the analytics

winged orchid
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Yeah so Google Analytics is probably making an overreach to remove access to the data?

devout slate
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The biggest issue was user IP addresses hitting American servers if I recall correctly, we just yeeted those out on the client and were compliant ever since

winged orchid
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Or "overly panicked" since they are a free service and cannot afford any fines?

devout slate
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Where did you get the news about removing data from?

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Maybe I missed the email but I'm pretty sure we didn't get notified lol

winged orchid
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Actually these site owners are totally wrong on so many levels. They aren't going to lose access to Google Analytics, I can't even find messaging they could have confused with a shutdown, this is what the official support site says: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528

Google Analytics 4 has replaced Universal Analytics - Analytics Help

Last updated: December 13, 2023 Google Analytics 4 is our next-generation measurement solution, and it has replaced Universal Analytics. Starting on July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics p

devout slate
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and all customers will lose access to the Universal Analytics interface and API starting on July 1, 2024

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Google Analytics 4 has been out since October 2020 though

winged orchid
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From what I can see looking at the details of what will be deprecated, the changes are only going to impact people using the API?

devout slate
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Basically you had to switch over to the new API yeah

winged orchid
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Yeah but the new version didn't import the old history so people are having a panic thinking they are going to be unable to compare old reports with new ones. Funny.

devout slate
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Tbf you had 4 years to click the export button in the old UI

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And then the import button in the new one

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And there even is an official migration tool

winged orchid
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Goals? I don't know who's using those but that's misleading as it's just allowing you to make sure the new version has similar goals to the old version, it's doing nothing to migrate the data.
I did get sent over a copy of the misleading article: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528?hl=en

And now I see how people got confused on the details.
If there's an easy migration path to get the old data into the same reporting view as the new data that'd be perfect but I don't see one?

Google Analytics 4 has replaced Universal Analytics - Analytics Help

Last updated: December 13, 2023 Google Analytics 4 is our next-generation measurement solution, and it has replaced Universal Analytics. Starting on July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics p

devout slate
winged orchid
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Neah that says the goals are targets the data is scored vs.

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Not the data, just the targets.

devout slate
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Isn't everyone using BigQuery or some other data warehouse anyway?

winged orchid
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Yeah I think they said something about BigQuery but the first question that came up was "why would that be safer/how long will we have over there?". 🙂

devout slate
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BigQuery is Google's data warehouse solution -> forever

winged orchid
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I'm starting to make sense of it all now.
There's really no easy way for the GDPR folks to assume you've got violating data inside BigQuery so theoretically it's fine?

devout slate
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Biggest difference is that you can choose the datacenter to host your data in

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The issue with GA was that the user IP addresses got sent to an American server without prior consent

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Once the user clicked on the consent button (or if you stripped out IPs before sending it off to GA) you were fine all along

winged orchid
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Gotta love how these "clever" new rules encourage less open solutions vs. actually have any improvement that anyone can put their fingers on.

devout slate
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GDPR just says you can't send PII outside of Europe without explicit permission lol

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In BigQuery you just say "ok put my shit on a datacenter in Europe" and you're done

winged orchid
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Wait.. Google Analytics was famous for not allowing us to see IPs. At one point they claimed they pay a 3rd party service to do the IP mashing so that Google can't reverse the IP mashups if they wanted to?

devout slate
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I don't know (or care) if they ever claimed that, sending PII off to the U.S. was the issue for European regulators

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Although they didn't particularly care (or take action) about GA specifically

winged orchid
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I remember wanting to use it for tracking way back and I was sad they mashed up the IPs.

devout slate
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You don't have to care about GDPR if your users aren't in Europe anyway

winged orchid
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Well there is a commercial solution, coupler.io, but the pricing is crazy because they have to deal with extracting the data from your Google Analytics, then they have to upload the data to your destination.

The mechanics of the work aren't too hard to DIY so I wouldn't be surprised if there's an open source solution?
The part that would be most crucial is that it's throttled to fly under the quota limits on the destination and it'll just keep running until it has completed a queue vs. forcing me to actually pick what is exported (like I know what's going to be important later?).

devout slate