site update Removal of Google Analytics

[Gloves 11,243]

Your privacy is important to us here at VGS.

Knowing how people interact with the site with in-depth data can certainly be interesting, and can definitely provide insight into what works and what doesn't, where people find themselves hanging out the most, etc.. That said, the software upon which the community is built does have built-in metrics which are generally sufficient for our purposes. We have the data, no real need to give it to Google too.

Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager) was enabled on the site from the outset in order to help us to learn and grow, but it is in my mind not worth it. While it has provided insights, it's not worth the invisible price, which is Google getting data on us all.

I do want to make it clear - having Google Analytics is completely normal. We're going a bit against the grain here because hey - we can! With the support of subscribers and occasional donations, we're more than capable of running this place for a long time. We don't need to number crunch data to make this a success, you've already done that. And together we'll keep making this house a home. 

[FireHazard51 1,993]

So what insights have you learned before pulling the plug.  I'm always interested in data analytics so I'm curious what you learned.  I'm assuming it's nothing of personal concern given all the data points so it'll be very generalized.