_drafts

Compare Matomo to Google Analytics

this is a draft page to peek at the data. I hope to add more data and better viz.

Adding Google Analytics tracking code to your site has been standard practice for years to gather data about visitors. However, many people are more critically considering this practice–Analytics is “free” because you are giving your user’s data/privacy away to Google in return. And with growing numbers of users blocking analytics, your data might not even be very accurate (see Marko Saric 1 and Marko Saric 2).

Luckily, there are a growing number of alternative options out there.

One fairly easy to adopt option is Matomo, an open source analytics platform. It is available as a one-click install on many hosts.

From Dec 2020 until Mar 2021 I had both Google Analytics and Matomo on some of my sites. This note compares the data from the two services.

Set Up

At bottom of head section:

  • Matomo code came first loaded from a personal .org domain, self hosted on Reclaim.
  • Google Analytics loaded via analytics.js version.

I collected the data for a set of top pages that have both analytics.

Pageviews

Page Month GA views MA views Difference
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2020-12 678 618 8%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2020-12 325 291 10%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2020-12 111 85 23%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2020-12 189 140 25%
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-01 680 623 8%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-01 429 344 19%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-01 137 120 12%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-01 190 187 1%
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-02 693 608 12%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-02 297 266 10%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-02 177 152 14%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-02 107 93 13%

GA seems to consistently record more pageviews.

In 2021-01 Google Analytics on sites across the world were hit by a spam spike from bot-traffic.icu (in my case, 5040 views in a day). Matomo did not record this traffic. Does Matomo do better at filtering out junk traffic?

Unique Pageviews

Page Month GA uniq views MA uniq views Difference
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2020-12 558 502 10%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2020-12 300 269 10%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2020-12 106 83 21%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2020-12 105 88 16%
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-01 570 527 7%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-01 392 313 20%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-01 129 114 11%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-01 125 122 2%
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-02 571 501 12%
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-02 266 238 10%
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-02 160 139 13%
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-02 78 67 14%

GA seems to consistently record more unique pageviews.

Average Load Time

Page Month GA average MA average Difference
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2020-12 2.63 1.75 0.88
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2020-12 0 0.81 -0.81
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2020-12 2.35 2.07 0.28
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2020-12 0 1.81 -1.81
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-01 0.76 1.81 -1.05
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-01 2.04 0.7 1.34
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-01 0 1.81 -1.81
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-01 1.15 1.88 -0.73
Setup Jupyter with Py 2, 3, and R 2021-02 2.25 1.78 0.47
Transfer iPhone to Linux 2021-02 2.13 0.98 1.15
Add more to Git Bash on Windows 2021-02 1.9 0.7 1.2
Go-Go GH-Pages home 2021-02 1.63 1.34 0.29

GA load times seem more random. Not sure why they would report “0” and then rather long load times.

Browser

Browser GA User % MA User % Difference
Chrome 71.88 64.5 7.38
Firefox 12.51 18.6 -6.09
Safari 7.68 10.8 -3.12
Edge 3.58 3.5 0.08

Not including other browsers (so it doesn’t add up to 100%). MA provides stats for desktop vs mobile browsers separately, so I added them together.

OS

OS GA User % MA User % Difference
Windows 45.88 45.4 0.48
GNU/Linux 17.27 24.4 -7.13
Mac 15.4 18.4 -3.0
iOS 4 6.4 -2.4
Android 15.4 5 10.4
Chrome OS 1.42 0.3 1.12

The large differences here are interesting. Has MA classified some Android as Linux? Do Linux users block GA but not MA?

Other notes

Overall, MA’s interface is very nice and less confusing than GA. It is definitely a viable alternative.