> Google Analytics is free, but Google uses the gobs of data about Internet usage it gets from tracking half the Internet for it's own purposes
Does anyone have a source on this? I attended a talk from someone from Google Analytics a few years back, and they claim that Google doesn't use any data they get from analytics for ads targeting. Not sure if their policies have changed.
> And we also use data about the ads you interact with to help advertisers understand the performance of their ad campaigns. We use a variety of tools to do this, including Google Analytics. When you visit sites that use Google Analytics, Google and a Google Analytics customer may link information about your activity from that site with activity from other sites that use our ad services.
> Google and a Google Analytics customer may link information about your activity from that site with activity from other sites that use our ad services.
To clarify: Linking your Google Analytics account with your Google Ads account is an explicit feature that the property owner can do to get a fuller view of the conversion funnel.
As far as I know (having worked on that team several years ago),
> they claim that Google doesn't use any data they get from analytics for ads targeting.
was otherwise factual. (That is, Google didn't willynilly take GA data and use it for its own purposes, or even cross-contaminate it in any way.)
Though don't know what might have changed in recent years.
This [1] happened in 2016. Google can change its privacy policy, but your data is still on their servers. The problem is not just a matter of what Google says about privacy, but a matter of trust, and Google has broken that many times already.
Does anyone have a source on this? I attended a talk from someone from Google Analytics a few years back, and they claim that Google doesn't use any data they get from analytics for ads targeting. Not sure if their policies have changed.