Browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way?

It's our job to stay on top of these kinds of things for our clients.  Yesterday we found this post on the Google Analytics blog about them allowing users to opt-out of having their web-browsing history being tracked by Google Analytics. This is the nubbins of it :-

We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

So what does this really mean?  Well it's a little unclear at the moment as that post is all the information we have at the moment. However what this is likely to mean is that via a browser plugin a visitor to your website can choose to have their page views NOT tracked by the Google Analytics code on your website?

This raises the question on whether visitors will have to do that site by site, or whether there will be a global setting for ALL websites.

Now, that's a bit scary for a digital marketing company like Conscious as it means that our clients could see increasingly lower page view statistics etc even though they are doing really good stuff with their website. 

I guess one might hope that most Internet users will never hear about this, or even if they do, won't take action on it.  One wonders just how prominently Google will publicise such a plugin, as ultimately it will hurt them as much as you.

Why are Googe doing this?

There are increasing concerns from some quarters about just how much data Google could hold about individual's browsing habits, there is a whole piece on Wikipedia about it.

Now, Google's motto is "Don't be evil", but with a reported 20,000 employees worldwide it only takes one person to cause some privacy issues should that individual choose to.

So what are the implications for a law firm?

There are number of actions that you should start doing now :-

1. Make sure you have a clear idea of what your "benchmark" statistics are now.
2. Keep an eye on these stats over the coming months to see if you can spot a drop.
3. Bookmark the Google Analytics Blog or our blog and keep an eye on it from time to time.
4. If you existing website provider does not offer an alternative set of statistics to Google Analytics, now is the time to ask them what their plans are if this goes head and it causes a drop in statistics on your website.