OT What does google analytics do here?

Not a windows question

Retrieved this webpage eearlier tonight, and again just now,
https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/

I think it took longer this time and in the middle of retreption**, the
little notes in the bottom left of the Firefox page said something like
"transferring to google analytics".

What is the purpose of that? Being too literal is an ongoing problem
of mine, but my first thought is that google was going to analyse why
the page was taking too long to load.


**If reception is the noun for receive, shouldn't retreption be the noun
for retrieve?

On 08/23/2020 10:44 PM, micky wrote:
Not a windows question

Retrieved this webpage eearlier tonight, and again just now,
https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/

I think it took longer this time and in the middle of retreption**, the
little notes in the bottom left of the Firefox page said something like
"transferring to google analytics".

What is the purpose of that? Being too literal is an ongoing problem
of mine, but my first thought is that google was going to analyse why
the page was taking too long to load.

Might be for

"There has been no activity for 15 minutes. As a security measure, your
session will time out in 5 minutes. Click OK to continue."

**If reception is the noun for receive,

receival

shouldn't retreption be the noun
for retrieve?

retrieval

micky,

... said something like "transferring to google analytics".

What is the purpose of that?

"google analytics" is a server/service which gathers statistics about page
hits, and makes them available to the website owner (afaik, for free)

Though the consensus is that Google uses them to track a visitors movements
over the 'web (alike spypixels, but with some benefit to the website owner,
so that he will keep using them).

Blocking the "google analytics" domain does not seem to have any adverse
effects.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:41:04 +0200,
"R.Wieser" wrote:

micky,

... said something like "transferring to google analytics".

What is the purpose of that?

"google analytics" is a server/service which gathers statistics about page
hits, and makes them available to the website owner (afaik, for free)

So one statistic might have been tonight, when it took a long time to
get some parts of the page?

If it had gone quickly, google analytics wouldn't have noticed, been
called, kept a record?

Though the consensus is that Google uses them to track a visitors movements
over the 'web (alike spypixels, but with some benefit to the website owner,
so that he will keep using them).

Blocking the "google analytics" domain does not seem to have any adverse
effects.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

micky,

So one statistic might have been tonight, when it took a long
time to get some parts of the page?

Not the way you think. Just the fact that you visited that webpage.

If it had gone quickly, google analytics wouldn't have noticed,
been called, kept a record?

Nope. Most likely the only reason that you saw that "transferring to
google analytics" message is because the response to your browsers request
for that data was a bit slow.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:41:04 +0200,
"R.Wieser" wrote:

micky,

... said something like "transferring to google analytics".

What is the purpose of that?

"google analytics" is a server/service which gathers statistics about page
hits, and makes them available to the website owner (afaik, for free)

There is a free tier, but you can pay to get more.

So one statistic might have been tonight, when it took a long time to
get some parts of the page?

Google will record a whole swathe of info, but what gets reported is
dependent on the what the site owner wants to know. Their reports are very
informative and highly detailed. You can set triggers so it's possible the
site owner to a notification that site traffic is slow, if they so desire.


If it had gone quickly, google analytics wouldn't have noticed, been
called, kept a record?

Nope. When a website has google analytics enabled every visit is recorded.
You only saw it because something was being slow.

"Corvid" wrote

| Retrieved this webpage eearlier tonight, and again just now,
| https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/
|
| I think it took longer this time and in the middle of retreption**, the
| little notes in the bottom left of the Firefox page said something like
| "transferring to google analytics".
|
| What is the purpose of that? Being too literal is an ongoing problem
| of mine, but my first thought is that google was going to analyse why
| the page was taking too long to load.
|
| Might be for
|
| "There has been no activity for 15 minutes. As a security measure, your
| session will time out in 5 minutes. Click OK to continue."

Google Analytics is spyware beacons and script that
track page visits. Webmasters who don't know what
they're doing -- and don't care about their visitors'
privacy -- add it to their pages in order to get free
stats for their website. What Google gets -- as with the
fonts they give away, the map links, the jquery, and
their ad tracking links such as googletagmanager --
is a chance to monitor nearly every visit to nearly
every webpage online... There's a reason they're the
top advertising company online. They didn't get there
by being nice.

"R.Wieser" wrote

| Blocking the "google analytics" domain does not seem to have any adverse
| effects.
|
Not much help, either, unless you also block their other
sources, along with other trackers like scorecardresearch.
Here's my list of Google blocking. (Note that you need
gstatic if you want to be able to deal with most captchas.)
I think these are all Google properties, but I'm not positive.

127.0.0.1 *.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 *.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 *.googlecommerce.com
127.0.0.1 *.1e100.com
127.0.0.1 *.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com
127.0.0.1 *.googletagservices.com
127.0.0.1 *.googletagmanager.com
127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 fonts.googleapis.com
127.0.0.1 *.2mdn.net
127.0.0.1 googleadapis.l.google.com
127.0.0.1 *.gstatic.com
127.0.0.1 plusone.google.com
127.0.0.1 cse.google.com
127.0.0.1 www.google.com/cse
127.0.0.1 www.youtube-nocookie.com
127.0.0.1 *.appspot.com

Mayayana,

| Blocking the "google analytics" domain does not seem to have any
| adverse effects.

Not much help, either, unless you also block their other
sources,

To be honest, I've got /all/ third-party domains blocked (with selected ones
permitted on a site-by-site basis).

But yes, just blocking the "google analytics" domain isn't going to help
much in the whole scheme of things.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:47:53 +0200,
"R.Wieser" wrote:

micky,

So one statistic might have been tonight, when it took a long
time to get some parts of the page?

Not the way you think. Just the fact that you visited that webpage.

If it had gone quickly, google analytics wouldn't have noticed,
been called, kept a record?

Nope. Most likely the only reason that you saw that "transferring to
google analytics" message is because the response to your browsers request
for that data was a bit slow.

I see. So that's one advantage to me of a slow response (this once).

Thanks, and thanks Chris.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

mickey,

Nope. Most likely the only reason that you saw that "transferring to
google analytics" message is because the response to your browsers request
for that data was a bit slow.

I see. So that's one advantage to me of a slow response (this once).

:-) Yep, the proverbial "silver line around a dark cloud".

Thanks, and thanks Chris.

You're welcome.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser