Placing your Analytics code on another person's site

I am negotiating a sale on flippa, and the seller has only provided me with awstats, which look dubious to me. I called him on it, and he has offered to place my Google Analytics code on the site so I can track traffic myself in real time.

Are there any risks in doing so? I think my javascript code is visible to anyone who can see my sites, but maybe I am missing something?

 

It's always risky doing things you are uncertain about that Google can see.
Personally if I decided to try this I would give them a tracking code hosted away from google - such as free Piwik

Also I'd first want to check the code to make sure it couldn't be used anywhere else to give false results - if they add it to another site, for example.

Awstats always shows me at least 3 times the number of visits compared to other tracking - such as Adsense

 

I agree with seafrontsteve, don't go with Google Analytics. You should try a free service (I recommend statcounter). This way, you will also not have anything to worry about.

Good luck!

 

There are so many companies out there who offer similar services. You can do a google search. More and more advanced Imers are going away from Big G.

 

Thanks for the responses, but perhaps my question is not understood correctly. I am not seeking recommendations for web stat providers. I am curious as to what vulnerabilities might giving your Analytics code to another person expose you to. As far as I know, the code is publicly viewable by right-clicking the page and selecting "View source."

 

You delete old analytics code and create new google analytics and set code in your website.

 

If you want to track your site yourself only then you can remove your analytic code from your website and generate fresh code of Google Analytic and upload it to website then track website performance on Google individually.

 

You are right. The code is visible to anyone in that right-clicks the page and selects "View source". I don't think that there would be a problem. You better create a new profile (in analytics) to this new site, so it gives you a new code.

But if still you are sckeptical you may create another google account and there you have a new analyics. But I don't think that there would be a problem if you give your code to this guy. Specially if he is trying to sell you something. You may check the bounce rate and other website-related stuff so that can help on making your desition whether to buy the site or not.

Have a nice day

 

if they give the rights you can to it

 

i guess this is not that much easy unless you have access to the credentials of the website where you want to place analytics code.