A Quick Note on Analytics & Ad Blockers Sun 13 February 2022

I used to be fixated on the idea of tracking as many hits as possible. Figuring out ways to get around ad blockers or capture stats via the server logs. I realised recently that this is simply unncessary bollocks. It’s all meaningless vanity stats.

Good analytics tracking isn’t about capturing the number of users on your website but the behaviour of the users, such that you can optimize for the behaviour you want. So actually capturing everyone is irrelevant as long as those without blocking is representitive of the whole user base.

This is, of course, assuming you don’t need user counts to sell ads or whatever on the website. I wonder if the behaviour of an ad blocking user different to a non ad blocking one? I’ll just have to live without knowing.