Clicky Blog

Clicky vs. Google Analytics (GA4)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Google Analytics may be a powerhouse for enterprise-level data modeling and complex cross-platform attribution, but that comes with a significant investment in time, configuration, and technical knowledge. Tack on the long data processing delays, and Google's gargantuan conflicts of interest when it comes to visitor privacy, and you'll find that many site owners are looking for GA4 alternatives. Clicky, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity, privacy, and real-time data. Shall we compare?

Block more bots w/ User Agent filters, new country options, & more!

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Bot Blocker 5000 is here to chew bubble gum and kick robot ass... and he's all out of bubble gum 😭 He brings with him some major updates to Clicky's visitor filtering (blocking) system, designed to give you much more granular control over what gets logged, and what doesn't:

Does Google sell your data?

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700

When you read Google's privacy policy, you'll see a bold claim: We do not sell your personal information. Technically, in many jurisdictions, they are telling the truth. (What counts as Personal Data and PII in web analytics?)

Web Analytics Privacy Alphabet Soup: GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, VCDPA, ROPA

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Clicky will be 20 years old in a few months. We've watched every privacy law show up, and have had to keep our own tracking compliant through all of it. We know exactly what counts as personal data in web analytics, what each privacy law requires, whether it applies to you, and what it means for your web analytics setup. GDPR applies if you process data belonging to anyone in the EU, no matter where your company sits. An IP address counts as personal data under GDPR, so the moment your analytics tool logs a raw IP from an EU visitor, you need a lawful basis for that. Consent is one basis. "Legitimate interest" is the other.

Cookieless Tracking Explained: What It Is, and What Actually Works

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0700

"The end of the cookie era is here!" It sounds like a revolution, some kind of magic wand that solves the two biggest headaches in modern web analytics: the death of the third-party cookie and the nightmare of global privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. But "cookieless" is often used as a marketing buzzword to mask either technical inadequacy or outright deception. If you are a founder, a developer, or a technical marketer, you need to know the difference between legitimate privacy-preserving tracking and the "snake oil" versions of cookieless technology.

What counts as Personal Data / PII in web analytics, and what Clicky never touches

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700

"Are we even allowed to collect this?" This question like arrives at the worst possible time. A privacy audit was just flagged, a new privacy law has just landed, or a developer starts asking uncomfortable questions. The answers to this question can vary greatly, depending on who you ask. Your lawyer may give you a high-level definition of "Personal Data." A developer will talk about unique identifiers and fingerprinting. Half the tools on the market will claim they're "privacy-compliant" while quietly collecting enough data to reconstruct a pretty detailed picture of a specific user.

How to See Who's on Your Website Right Now

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Launching something new is stressful. You send the emails, post to social, and then you sit there and wait. Not too long ago, "wait" meant checking your website traffic the next morning to see what happened. By then, whatever you might have done about a traffic spike or a conversion problem was irrelevant. The window had closed. Real-time analytics is about collapsing that window. Seeing what's happening while it's happening, not after.

Server-side tracking, explained: Stop losing your most important data

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700

When you check your website traffic and see 50 conversions, but your payment processor shows you actually had 75... where did the other 25 go? The culprit is usually not a bug in your code or your web analytics. It's a fundamental limitation of how tracking works. To fix it, you need to move beyond the browser: You need server-side tracking.

What website metrics actually matter, and which ones are vanity

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0700

Many founders and marketers have a dashboard that looks like a success story on the surface: The lines are trending up, the numbers are getting bigger, and everything seems great. But in reality, their revenue is flat, or their churn is creeping up, or they can't figure out why their latest campaign didn't result in any new customers. This is the dashboard delusion that many fall into when checking website traffic: vanity metrics that make you feel good, but they don't tell you anything about the actual health of your business.

How to check website traffic

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 -0700

When people ask how to check website traffic, they are usually asking one of two very different questions: First, there are the website owners who want to know how many visitors are actually showing up. They may have just launched something, or perhaps finally realized they've been flying blind for months.