Google Analytics and Your Privacy Policy
26 11 2007
Today I did a little work on a privacy policy I have been writing for a website. Privacy policies are something I have ignored in the past, but they are becoming increasingly important as more people on the web these days actually read them, and they can give more “trust” to your site from certain parties.
I started it off with the information gathered from Google Analytics that I use for various purposes. Google Analytics is a really great analytical tool, and it is an effective way to run pretty reports that clearly show visitor trends, effectiveness of marketing, search queries, etc. I’ve had a few clients ask some pretty tough questions in the past, and on occassion, I’ve had to dig deep into Analytics to find the answer. Did you know that Analytics tracks visitor stats down to browser type, OS, geographical location, Java version, network location, screen resolution, and more?
While writing the Analytics section of the privacy policy, I double checked a few things in my Analytics account to make sure I got the most important items, and below is the list I came up with. Comments and suggestions are welcome; this is the very first section of the first draft.
Types of information collected on ———-.com
- Information Collected From All Visitors
- Visitors to this website who have javascript enabled are tracked using Google Analytics. Google Analytics collects the following types of information from users:
- Type of user agent (web browser) used, software manufacture and version number.
- Type of operating system
- Screen colors (color processing ability of the users screen)
- Javascript support
- Flash version
- Screen resolution
- Network location and IP address
- Can include country, city, state, region, county, or any other geographic data.
- Hostname
- Bandwidth (internet connection speed)
- Time of visit
- Pages visited
- Time spent on each page of the website
- Referring site statistics
- The website (URI) the user came through in order to arrive at this website (example: clicking on a hyperlink from Yahoo.com that took the user to this website)
- Search engine query used (example: typing in a phrase into a search engine like Google, and clicking on a link from that search engine)
- This data is primarily used to optimize our website for our visitors, however we will use this data for marketing purposes. An example of how this data could be used for marketing purposes would be to tell potential advertisers how many visitors we get to the website, where our visitors come from, and how they arrive at our website.
- This data DOES NOT include any personalized identification information such as:
- Names
- Phone Numbers
- Email Addresses
- Mailing Addresses
- Social Security Numbers
- Bank Account Numbers
- Credit Card Information
- Visitors to this website who have javascript enabled are tracked using Google Analytics. Google Analytics collects the following types of information from users:
- Information Collected from All Users Who Register on This Website…
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I finally finished my privacy policy for The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory, it’s located here:
http://family-marriage-counseling.com/privacy-policy.htm
There is a whole section on Google Analytics as well as some other information about data that gets used on the site.
Chris,
I have the NoScript plugin installed on Firefox and I *never* allow GoogleAnalytics. It just sits there as a Script Currently Forbidden … can you give me a good reason to allow it, knowing how crazy I am about my own privacy? Frankly, it will have to be a good reason. I wish I could permanently deny it so that I won’t see that little window all the time …
Say hi to the fam for me. Kiss the babies.
SW
Great Info! I’m surprised Google Analytics doesn’t include some boilerplate text to add to your privacy policy when installing. Thanks for posting this.