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Effective and Compliant Google Analytics Alternative

Published on: 2022-4-5 Effective and Compliant Google Analytics Alternative

One of the most popular web analytics solutions on the Internet is, without a doubt, Google Analytics. It is ubiquitous and often synonymous with Web Analytics.

It is free for up to 10 million events and comes from a household brand, Google. Moreover, it has grown feature-rich and integrated with other Google properties over the last two decades. It integrates with Google Search Console and Ads Manager which gives marketers an egde.

Sounds great, right?

Well, there are numerous issues with Google Analytics. And that's why we created Wide Angle Analytics, an effective Google Analytics alternative.

You don't have to eat all the data

Google Analytics is a complex product, offering very advanced features. In addition, there is a whole Analytics Academy website where marketing and IT professionals need to learn the multiple concepts and facets of the platform.

The platform encourages you to collect all the data there is. However, while there are controls to select what and how information is collected, it is not welcoming, and it is easy to capture more than necessary accidentally.

Wide Angle Analytics cuts to the chase. Unlike Google's product, we focus on building a welcoming experience that quickly uncovers core metrics and provides the most privacy-friendly defaults.

Google Analytics vs GDPR

Since the introduction of GDPR, deploying Google Analytics and being compliant has been challenging. While possible, it was difficult due to the complexity we already mentioned.

Today, however, usage of Google Analytics is ever more questionable. In 2020 the US-EU Privacy Shield was struck down. Subsequently, the Schrems II ruling from 2021 exposed even more challenges with syphoning data to Google's vast data collection machine.

In early 2022 numerous European countries and their respective Data Protection Authorities heralded that Google Analytics is illegal.

The legal situation is evolving, but one thing is clear: using free, data-hungry products like Google Analytics exposes your business to scrutiny and risk of fines.

There are numerous alternatives. Some are rudimentary and lack sophistication. Others attempt to provide privacy-friendly solutions but fall victim to Schrems II ruling by using Amazon AWS or Google GCP infrastructure.

Wide Angle Analytics is free of these shortcomings. Our product is 100% EU hosted and managed by a European legal entity with no connection to the USA, China or Russia. We operate in Germany, using data centres owned by European companies.

We do it to assure data sovereignty and complete control over our systems and data without undue exposure to the so-called third countries' legal systems.

We use one of biggest and the best provider on the market hence we offer performant solution no matter where your vistors are coming from.

Universally Blocked and Borderline Useless

Google Analytics is almost universally blocked by most if not all adblock and anti-tracker extensions. According to Statista, in 2019 roughly 800 million Internet users used some form of adblockers. More importantly different study by Audience Project, quoted by Statista show that around 38-45% of users across all age groups, use or used adblockers at some point in 2020.

Almost half of users across all age groups use adblockers

These reports are damning. You can't trust what you see Google Analytics. Your reports will have huge gaps.

Wide Angle Analytics is privacy friendly from the get go. Most adblockers do not affect our ability to collect traffic analytics. And while some list operators include our default domain, we offer our customer ability to collect events via custom domain. Feature that is available to every customer on every plan.

Custom Domain is not full proof, yet even this simple approach suffice to greatly improve accuracy of web traffic tracking.

With Wide Angle Analytics You

  • Limit risk.
  • Improve accuracy.
  • Measure what matters.
Start Analyzing Traffic Today!
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