Google Analytics has quickly become a very popular Web analytics tool for publishers who want to learn more about their visitors. Not every user, however, is comfortable with the idea of giving even more data to Google and these publishers. Today, Google released the beta version of a browser plugin that allows users to opt-out of Google Analytics tracking. The plugin is available for Internet Explorer (versions 7 and 8), Google Chrome (4 and higher), and Mozilla Firefox (3.5 and higher).
Installing the tool is as easy as heading over to the site and installing the browser plugin. After this, your visits to sites that use Google Analytics will not be registered by Google Analytics and website owners won’t see your visit in their stats. Even though your visit won’t appear in Google Analytics, it is worth noting that the Web server’s logs will still show that you visited the site.
Google now also gives publishers the ability to provide their visitors with an extra level of privacy. Publishers can now choose to anonymize IP addresses sent to Google, so that a user’s exact geographic location (which the IP address often reveals), will remain hidden.
Do You Care Enough to Opt Out?
Google promised to release this tool about two months ago. For publishers, this is obviously not an ideal situation, as they rely on accurate statistics to manage their sites and tweak their marketing efforts. But it remains to be seen how many users will actually install this plugin. According to Google spokesman Brian Richardson, who spoke to the Los Angeles Times earlier today, only one in 15 visitors to Google’s Ads Preferences Manager actually decides to opt out of the personalized advertising program.
Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village
