Hey there, I've been using Google Analytics on many of my sites for many years now, and yes, the web giant's free service is very attractive on many levels. But over the past couple years, my interest in finding an alternative to GA has been growing stronger. Why? I just don't like the idea of Google knowing every little detail about my site's structure, traffic, visitors, etc. Am I alone in this feeling? I am considering Clicky, as they have built in support for split testing. To be honest, I don't really need all of the data that GA provides - 99% of my sites are highly customized WordPress blogs. What are you guys using if not GA? One more thing I am researching is performance of alternative analytics software vs. GA. Regards, Devin
Take of your tinfoil hat, mate. You're panicking far too much. If you want Google to know less, block them using robots.txt. If you have nothing to hide (i.e. no black hat tactics, spamming, etc), then why are you worried about what Google knows? Have you considered running your own analytics, e.g. Piwik?
ryan is right, unless you are doing anything shady then analytic will actually be more beneficial to your site, and the benefit really do outweigh the concern. Tried piwik, but I dont like the idea of adding another resource eater to my host. Do you use adsense by any chance? if you do, then google will have access to your sites with or without analytic anyway
And what about such fact that google doesn't allow us to know all the keywords people type, this coresponds to those people who are registered in gmail! How to see all the key phrases?
There's no way to see all of them, however it's not hard to guess. Have a read of this article, it might help you figure out what some of them area: How to Analyze Google Analytics (not provided) Data
I am also thinking of going away from GA and will implement piwik[dot]org ... An open source Open Source Real Time Web Analytics Reports for your Websites.