You know how when you go to websites, and that thing pops up, usually from the bottom of the page and is like "Just wanna let you know, we use cookies to track you but you can choose to only allow 'essential' cookies...". Well, I didn't wanna put that on my site, and I thought I didn't need to because I didn't put any tracking cookies on my site... or so I thought.

I can't remember when was the first time I started using Google Analytics, but it kinda just seemed like the de facto thing to do when you launch a new website. Of course you wanna know how many page hits your getting, right? And what's even better is you get other cool info, like which countries and cities you're getting visitors from, how long they spent on each page, certain actions they took like scrolling, downloading, etc. It's all really good info to know. Every company I've ever worked at that had a website used it, so I never really thought twice about putting it on my sites too. After all, it's *FREE.

But as well all know, nothing in life is free (except for the downloads on my music page, but honestly that might not be for long! So go download stuff now before I change my mind and take it down!) But anyway, back to the topic. No free lunches for real. But here's the other thing, before I get into that, we have to talk about GDPR. If you don't already know, GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation. Which is basically this law that the European Union put into place regarding how data is collected on websites. There's also this thing called the CCPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is not exactly the same as the GDPR, but is very similar. One thing that they're both clear about is that, if your website is accessible in their regions, you have to let people know when you're tracking them individually and selling their data. So here's the thing, I'm thinking surely I'm not selling anyone's data and would never do that! But little did I know, getting the analytics services from Google Analytics comes at a cost. It's not actually free. In exchange for the analytics tool, you're allowing Google to track visitors to your site on an individual level that allows them to better target them with advertising across the internet. I honestly had no idea. Google Analytics doesn't even share that level of analytics detail with the site owner so unless you read their terms of service, you wouldn't really know what they're doing with the data.

So, when I realized all this. I just took it off my site. I honestly don't even really need details on where my visitors came from, if they're repeat visitors or new, or whatever. That doesn't make any difference to me because all because the only thing I really care about is whether I'm reaching anyone at all. On top of that, I had already already built in a page hit counter that doesn't use cookies or any type of identifying data. It just records every time a page is requested and served. I don't know who did it and honestly, why should I even care? Honestly, it's not really even that exciting just seeing numbers go up. The most exciting feedback I get is when someone actually signs up to my mailing list, signs the guestbook, sends a message via my contact page, comments on a blog post, or just flat out tells me that they went to my website and thought it was cool (or that there's something I could improve!). So yeah, Google Analytics it OUT! I won't be complicit in selling anyone's data.

So where do I go from here? I've been doing a little digging around and found out that there are other analytics platforms that do 'cookieless' analytics. You can look up em, I'm not gonna give out any free link juice to them lol. But yeah, I think that's a cool idea, but as you probably guessed, they cost real hard earned cash, which isn't really a bad thing. At least they're up front with their business model. I just don't wanna have any more subscriptions than I actually need. So, although I wouldn't suggest other people do this, I think I'm just gonna build out my own page hit counter to give me a little more info. The only other thing I'd like to see aside from which pages got hit is how many hits I got on a specific day, so that I can make a little graph that shows growth over time. Again, I don't need to know any information about the individual visitors, just how many hits I get. I think that's enough. But for now, I'm not even gonna worry about that. I need to focus on finishing up my E-shop, so I can sell these CDs and T-shirts. But don't worry, going forward, Google will not know about what you do when you're here.