SEO News: Google Analytics New Opt-out Add-on
Does this new Opt-Out Add-on for Google Analyics mean your tracking data won’t be as accurate as before? How will this affect SEO?
Yesterday, Google Analytics announced on it’s official blog that it is launching a new beta version of an opt-out add-on for people worried about their privacy.
Personally, I think this is madness. Sheer madness. I rely quite heavily on Google Analytics to tell me how a website is performing and how I can improve it. It is extremely important for conversion to have accurate analytic data.
By enabling this add-on your visitors can stop Google Analytics from tracking any information about their browsing habits. This may be great for the privacy conscious amongst us, but why hide this information? Who will benefit from it? I just don’t understand how this will be a beneficial move for Google, internet users or website owners.
Creare’s SEO Department Manager, Nick Rinylo says:
“We believe that users should have the ability to protect their privacy, however the reporting data collated by Google Analytics helps Creare analyise traffic for our clients everyday. Less information could mean that decisions affecting clients strategies takes longer to get 100% right, we will however adapt and continue to provide an excellent return on investment.”
For SEOs it won’t be a disaster, we’ll find a way of still doing what we do – that’s how it works. Google launches some new tool or algorithm update and we adapt our methods. It’s the cat and mouse element that keeps SEO exciting and helps me get out of bed in the morning…
However, I have to say that the ‘Average Joe’ probably will never find out about this because Google have only published the add-on information on their Analytics blog, and unless you have a website with Google Analytics installed you are unlikely to choose to read it. In any case you can already disable Javascript, so I don’t really know what this new add-on will do that can’t already be done.
May 27th, 2010
it seems like a bad new for me.