Blog
Notes on privacy-first analytics, measured comparisons, and building a $1/month product in the open.
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How many companies does your cookie banner actually share data with? A new complaint counted 1,741
A July 2026 GDPR complaint says one cookie-banner "Accept" shared data with 1,741 ad partners — 170+ hours of policies to read. Why the only safe vendor count is zero.
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Is ChatGPT losing traffic share in 2026? That headline is about the wrong number
The viral "ChatGPT dropped to 54%" stat measures visits to chatgpt.com, not referrals to your site. Here's the 2026 AI assistant mix, why trackers disagree, and what your own log shows.
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A US Supreme Court ruling just put Google Analytics' EU data transfers back in question
On 29 June 2026 the Supreme Court stripped the FTC of the independence the EU-US Data Privacy Framework leans on. Here's what it means for GA4 — and why it's a non-event for cookieless analytics.
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Can you run web analytics without a cookie banner in France? The CNIL says yes — if your tool passes this test
France lets you skip the cookie banner for analytics that meet the CNIL's criteria — but since January 2026 you self-certify. Here's the test, and why cookieless first-party analytics passes it.
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AI crawlers vs. AI referrals: what your analytics actually sees
AI bots crawl thousands of your pages per visitor they send back. That crawl traffic and the AI referral clicks in your dashboard are different layers — and your analytics measures only one.
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GA4's Source Group dimension cleans up messy traffic sources — here's what it does, and the model that made it necessary
GA4's Source Group (June 2026) finally merges facebook, fb, and m.facebook.com into one label, retroactively. What it does, how to use it, and why GA4 needed it in the first place.
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Why your GA4 is full of traffic from China and Singapore — and why you can't filter it
The 2026 GA4 ghost-traffic wave POSTs fake hits straight to Google's servers, so your WAF never sees them. Here's why GA4's own filters can't stop it — and what first-party analytics does differently.
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GA4's Measurement Protocol is in maintenance mode — what changed, and why "own your data" shouldn't mean re-plumbing every 18 months
Is the GA4 Measurement Protocol deprecated? No — it's frozen. Here's what maintenance mode means, the 2026 migration deadlines, and why server-side GA4 still can't drop the pixel.
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See your website visitors on a map — by country, without an IP lookup
Simplytics now shows visitors on a world map. How GA4, Plausible, Fathom, Matomo and Simplytics draw geography — which have a real map, and which resolve you down to your city.
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Compare this period to the last one — period-over-period is built into every Simplytics dashboard
Simplytics now overlays the previous equal-length period on your charts with delta badges on every metric — except the one number we won't fake. Here's how it works.
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The EU's Digital Omnibus wants to exempt aggregated analytics from cookie consent — what it would and wouldn't cover
The EU's Digital Omnibus proposes exempting first-party, aggregate-only audience measurement from cookie consent. It's a proposal, not law — here's what it covers and excludes.
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How to track single-page app pageviews (React, Vue, Next) without cookies
SPAs only count the first page load by default. Here's how GA4, Plausible, Fathom, Matomo and Simplytics handle client-side routing — and which need zero config.
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How long does each analytics tool keep your data? The aggregate-forever vs raw-data trade-off
GA4 keeps user-level data 2–14 months; Plausible 3–5 years; Fathom and Simplytics keep aggregates forever. Here's what each tool retains, and why raw data is the clock that limits your history.
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GA4's June 15, 2026 data-controls change — and the consent machinery a cookie-less tool never had
On June 15, 2026 GA4 makes Consent Mode the single control over the Google Ads data flow. Here's what changed, who must check it, and why a cookie-less tool has nothing to reconfigure.
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GA4 finally has a native "AI Assistant" channel — here's what it still hides
GA4 added an automatic AI Assistant channel on May 13, 2026. It catches ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — but Perplexity, AI Overviews and copy-paste clicks still slip past it.
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Show a view counter on every blog post — one script, no per-post setup
Add a live "views" badge to every blog post — one snippet in your post template, or a plain image URL per page. No per-post setup, all-time views, ~1 KB SVG.
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We measured how much JavaScript five analytics tools make your visitors download
Measured June 2026: Google Analytics ships ~140 KB of compressed JavaScript per visitor. Simplytics ships ~1.9 KB. Here are the numbers and how we measured them.
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How to see ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini traffic in your analytics (and why GA4 hides most of it)
AI assistants are a real referral channel now, but GA4 buries most of it in Direct. Here is how to recover the measurable part — with a custom GA4 channel group, or automatically.