Thread: Top Ten Myths About Google Analytics

That is a pretty good read. Those google people can come up with some funny stuff.

The list tells me that people make it a habit of hating on google analytics. Just "why" people so much anger towards a script, I do not know.

Originally Posted by Shawn

That list says that Google uses only 1st party cookies and I had to scratch my head - On my site a 1st party cookie would be one of my own and third party would be something, well, like a Google analytics cookie......

That is quite confusing.

Cookies and Google Analytics says:

Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics sets or updates cookies only to collect data required for the reports. Additionally, Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. This means that all cookies set by Google Analytics for your domain send data only to the servers for your domain. This effectively makes Google Analytics cookies the personal property of your website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain.

This appears to be saying that GA is storing the cookies on my web server, which is what makes them first-party cookies.

Originally Posted by texashiker

The list tells me that people make it a habit of hating on google analytics. Just "why" people so much anger towards a script, I do not know.

I think it's because people don't trust Google, because Google is extremely secretive and has a history of bad behavior.

GA worried me for awhile, and then I realized that Google already had all my data anyway. GA did not significantly increase my level of risk -- only because I am already completely owned.

I was having pretty much the same dilemma as Will in the beginning, about registering for GA but then I registered anyway, just to get an idea how was google viewing my site and what data it gathered!

The article posted by OP was a good read but I guess, it appeared more of an advertising material rather than giving out any substantial information!

Regards,

RightMan