Your own Analytics and why it's better than Google

[Kurt]

This is a free open source option for website stats called Matomo. It used to be called Pikwik and I first installed it many years ago.

It's similar to Google Analytics for web traffic stats. There's a paid version starting at about $20 a month and a FREE version that you can install on your site.

https://matomo.org/

The Good:

• It's free.
  
• You control all your sites' traffic info and don't share it with Google.
  
• Just as important, if you use Analytics on your pages Google will track your visitors and sell that data to advertisers.
  
• You just install it once and you can use it on all your domains. You can even give other people access to stats for their sites.
  

The Bad:

• It's a big download and upload.
  
• You may need to set the Config folder to 777 and they don't tell you this in the docs.
  
• You need to be able create a MYSQL database.
  
• If you have an old version of PHP on your site, there may be an issue with the php.ini file. It sounds complicated but if you have cPanel you just need to paste a small phrase into a form in cPanel. Just paste any errors into Google.
  

This is one of those things that will take an hour or so and a fistful of aspirin. But you only have to install it once and it will work for all your sites and you can protect your info and your visitors' info from Google and everyone they sell data to.

...and it's actually pretty cool.

Matomo is also a great opportunity for folks offering web services. Becoming an expert in Matomo is a skill that can be sold to businesses and since it's Open Source you can legally use it on all of your clients' sites for free.