Knowing who's sharing your content, your real-time visitors, and how long they stay on your website is incredibly actionable stuff. It tells you whether you're creating stuff that has a long-term draw, it tells you about the nature of who links your pages, and it tells you whether one layout or piece of content works better than another. (And you know when a term trends on Google.) You can change your tactics based on your traffic.
When your goal is to attract an audience, that's just standard boilerplate stuff as far as actionable insight goes.
Your privacy concerns are legitimate, but it's hard to consider any of these issues from a black box. You need data—and Google Analytics is the most common way to get that data.
When your goal is to attract an audience, that's just standard boilerplate stuff as far as actionable insight goes.
Your privacy concerns are legitimate, but it's hard to consider any of these issues from a black box. You need data—and Google Analytics is the most common way to get that data.