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Comment by mkr-hn | Hacker News Reader

I ditched analytics entirely when I realized they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Stat dashboards are skinner boxes that get in the way of doing the work of trying new things, getting feedback, and using it for the next thing.

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The entire purpose of analytics is to tell you what you don't know. But go off.

While it might be a bit hyperbolic to suggest that analytics don't tell you anything new, I've seen vanity metrics toted around on more than one occasion as if it meant anything actionable or otherwise unknowable. I think this is more common than the other way around. It's like the ol' conundrum where an A/B test is performed on a design change, and the B version results in more "engagement" with the site; what they fail to openly mention is that so-called engagement may just be the frustration of the user trying to bypass your crummy design update.

IMO, the best analytics for many businesses is customer acquisition and revenue as well as customer feedback. If you aren't adequately responding to those inherent analytics then you shouldn't yet be using The Google's form of black magic.

I joke around that my “best” traffic days are when my website is broken and users keep reloading the page to see if it is fixed.

You've seen vanity metrics? That's throwing the baby out with the bath water. You just haven't seen the value it brings. Analytics isn't black magic and it won't run your business for you.

Some people think the existence of vanity metrics or stupid tests means that the entire concept is bullshit. That is their problem, and reveals more about their limited perspective than it does about whether or not analytics is important.

I started back in the '00s with server-side stat tools like AWStats and never learned anything new from checking them. Why would I keep wasting time? My subjective experience tells me they're useless for me, and this is a common enough experience.

That doesn't mean everyone will have the same experience, but it does mean most people probably don't need to feed into Google's ability to track everyone just to look at their stats and say "yep, that's where I'd expect a person to come from."

If knowing where your traffic comes from and what it does on your site has no value to you then I'm not going to try and convince you otherwise. You can try and ask your users who either won't respond to you or potentially give you incorrect or misleading responses, if you want analytics, you know, in order to make business decisions.

Your website has GA4 installed on it, you might want to remove that.

That's put there by the platform. I don't have access or interest.

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