Friday, March 19, 2010

Google Analytics Plans to Offer Opt-Out for Users

One of the most powerful citizens of Webtown also happens to be rather well-behaved at times – which serves the interests of others as well as (arguably) the long term interests of the citizen itself. Google, who already provides data export initiatives as well as a privacy dashboard to show what they store, now announced that “have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics.” Google say they “concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics”. This is now finalized and tested, Google says, to be made available in the near future.

As a webmaster who uses Analytics across all of my sites, I think it’s great to allow those who don’t want to be tracked an easy opt-out, and I also don’t think these opt-outs would seriously interfere with the overall number trends (unless a browser would ship with such a non-tracking setting switched on by default). Speaking of which, what do you think – should Google offer the same global opt-out for AdSense... for people who don’t want to see their ads on third-party sites?

[Thanks Hebbet!]

Google Analytics Plans to ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (3+8)

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