Visto le recenti vicende con il Italian Data Protection Authority and those of other states the discourse on website metrics and analytics becomes increasingly delicate.
It appears increasingly complex to understand how a company uses your data and whether its use complies with the law and follows the GDPR.
A solution extremely easy to implement and secure from a privacy standpoint is having a self-hosted analytics service on European soil fully compliant with the GDPR.
Table of contents
- The software under examination: Plausible, Matomo and Matomo WordPress
- What fields are there? Are they filterable?
- Do they integrate with Google Analytics and ADS systems?
- Can I track the origin of visits and searches (Google, Bing…), and/or visitor behavior?
- How much historic data is kept
- Installation: how complex is it?
- Small note in margin
- In conclusion
The software in examination: Plausible, Matomo and Matomo WordPress
In this article we analyze the differences of the three self-hosted analytics tools and their respective issues. Then we have:
- Plausible, private platform that already offers paid hosting as well as the possibility to install it as self-hosted, multisite
- Matomo, platform open source che, come anche Plausible, ha sia la versione hostata dagli sviluppatori che quella self-hosted, multisito
- Matomo WordPress, plugin for WordPress that saves the site’s analytics data on the same site, avoiding the need to use another server to collect the data, monosite
Bisogna anche ricordarsi che, ogni singolo ha esigenze diverse e che nessuno di questi tre tool è la soluzione universale ma sono tutte ottime sostituzioni di Google Analytics.
Therefore, examining our needs and those of our customers, we have listed some features or utilities that we believe it is important to highlight in order to make a conscious choice on which type of self-hosting analytics to invest.
These requirements have therefore been used to perform an analysis of possible solutions and see the respective strengths and weaknesses of the systems in relation to our needs. If we do not list something, it is because it does not satisfy any of our specific requirements.
What fields are there? Are they filterable?
The foundation for all analytics systems. The tools in examination have all the fields necessary for possible seo analyses. There are visitor data such as country of origin, browser used, landing page, and abandoned page. To these are added some request metadata that allow more specific analyses for more advanced requirements.
Additionally there is a series of configurable filters that allow targeted graphs for the analyses being done limiting the temporal period or filtering by one of the metadata.
Do they integrate with Google Analytics and the ADS systems?
At the time of writing this article only Matomo has the possibility to import Analytics data. The Matomo WordPress does not yet have this support although it is easy that it will arrive in the future.
Instead Plausible has stated that the import from Google Analytics will be implemented in the next version of self hosted although not from a specific date or period (link to the announcement).
Instead, the support of ADS systems (such as Google ADS or Facebook ADS) and similar systems is more robust. Unless you use Matomo WordPress, which currently does not support it, it is possible to record traffic and metadata both from Matomo and from Plausible, even if you must first set them up so that this data is internally tagged in order to distinguish it from the rest of the traffic.
In addition, all three systems allow setting up goals that enable the correct evaluation of campaigns related to these ADS accounts or to other goals that one may have.
Can I track the origin of visits and searches (Google, Bing…), and/or visitor behavior?
Here the Matomo WordPress is the most penalized. Although it can track the visitor’s behavior, it does not trace their searches. Instead, both Matomo and Plausible are able to integrate/interact with Google Search Console and correctly retrieve the data (which can be filtered as well).
Note to margin: Only Matomo supports Bing and Yahoo, and Plausible has never shown any interest or announced the development for supporting the Bing or Yahoo engines.
For what concerns visitor behavior tracking, all systems provide a relatively easy-to-configure and manage Tag Manager system that mimics the features of Google Tags Manager. This allows for advanced monitoring of user behavior on objects of interest.
To these features Matomo adds two extremely useful functionalities for behavior tracking:
- Form Analytics, a system that allows tracking of forms, their completion and the abandonment of the form itself, all things that allow optimizing the visitor’s interaction with the site
- Content Tracking a system that allows tracking a fragment of the page and obtaining visualization and interaction metrics. Very useful for calculating banner advertising metrics
Both are configurable and filterable so as to be as flexible as possible.
How much historical data is retained
If working with metrics it is always useful to have an analytics history, and sometimes analyses cannot be done without it. For this reason, we consider it an important piece of information for the best tool choice. In this case, all three are potentially unlimited; i.e., as long as the data are not deleted, they will always be available. Obviously, this means that the systems must be correctly configured so that they compress the analytics data in the db as optimally as possible, otherwise, the system slows down. It is advised not to leave too much data during WordPress installation because it penalizes the site, therefore no more than 2 years.
It is also possible to export the data partially via the GUI and, completely, via API both for Matomo and for Plausible (not for the WordPress plugin).
Installation: how complex is it?
The installation and configuration of these tools is different for each one of these tools. Therefore, we will first see the installation of each one of them:
Matomo WordPress
Simple installation of a WordPress plugin. Extremely simple and quick, just need to check that it does not conflict with other plugins or the site’s theme.
Once the Analytics interface is installed it will be inside the WordPress admin panel.
Being a WordPress plugin there is nothing to add to the site code or import somewhere on the page. It is WordPress itself that handles everything completely.
Plausible
Installation not complicated but not simple either. Uses Docker Compose to bring up the entire environment and all its dependencies for which, although it would be a non-trivial installation underneath, the four cross commands present in the online wiki of Plausible do everything that is necessary to install Plausible. Subsequently, it is recommended to put a reverse proxy in front to have the connection in HTTPS otherwise not possible.
Once the server installation is finished, you need to tell Plausible to track the site/sites of interest and obtain the line of code to include on the site for tracking.
Small note. At the time of writing this article the code for Plausible is lighter than that of Matomo, so if one seeks to lighten the site requests it might be useful to know.
Matomo
Installation not complicated but not simple either. Matomo is a PHP application that “unzips” and visits the page where Matomo will be served and completes a series of steps such as checking PHP dependencies or accessing the db.
Fatto questo, Matomo (server) risulta installato ma non sta ancora tracciando nulla. Serve quindi procedere con l’installazione del codice di tracking. Bisogna infatti registrare il sito che si vuole tracciare in Matomo e copiare il codice ottenuto nel sito che si vuole monitorare.
This can be done for an indefinite number of sites as, unlike that related to a WordPress installation, it is not tied to a specific site.
Small margin note
Riteniamo corretto segnalare una cosa che, pur non essendo una delle nostre esigenze, può essere un fattore determinante per alcuni: Matomo è un progetto Open Source di conseguenza il codice è pubblico, modificabile e aggiornabile da chiunque mentre Plausible è un software proprietario gratuito sviluppato da una piccolo team.
In conclusion
The analytics systems are an important tool for doing analyses for the sites and one must always be behind the new privacy regulations for which we always recommend listening to the opinion of professionals both regarding privacy and SEO or hosting. Indeed, these are delicate topics and risks of having to pay dearly in case of error. This means that it might also make sense to have a company that, besides hosting you, offers an analytics service that follows the GDPR guidelines and stays behind the new privacy regulations for you.
