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Thomas Bnt ☕
Thomas Bnt ☕ Subscriber

Posted on • Updated on

Removing Google Analytics does it have an impact on the ranking?

Hello !

I'm basically a user who had pushed out of my view Google Analytics, to use Open Source solutions (that's the base) such as Matomo (formerly Piwik), and then I tested Umami, very easy to use and lighter. ✨

But recently, I asked myself the question again, and I couldn't find a clear answer.

Does removing Google Analytics from my websites have an impact on ranking and SEO?

Feel free to share with us posts, documentations and latest information about that. Thanks 👍🏼


Edit of the 11 january :

Top comments (21)

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joelbonetr profile image
JoelBonetR 🥇 • Edited

If you don't have analytics probably the site ranks a bit better due to better performance.

You'll lose insights and user base knowledge through.

Using a competitor's tool should rank the same, assuming both have the same impact (check with Lighthouse plugin for Chrome).

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Ok clear !

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

I can only think of two ways removing GA could affect your ranking:

  1. the site loads slightly faster without analytics
  2. people running things like Ghostery or Privacy Badger will perhaps be more likely to stay on your site rather than bouncing immediately
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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Yeah I see 👍😄

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j471n profile image
Jatin Sharma

Nope, i doesn't affect your SEO. However it affects your performance score.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕ • Edited

However it affects your performance score.

When we remove or add GA?

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j471n profile image
Jatin Sharma

Removing GA may improve your performance score as you browser won't have to download and execute GA script when user visits your website.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Yeah seems logic! Thanks!

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cicirello profile image
Vincent A. Cicirello • Edited

I wouldn't think that using or not using Google Analytics or any of the alternatives would affect SEO and ranking simply by having it installed on the site. If you are using the data from Google Analytics, etc to optimize content in some way, then that can certainly affect SEO and ranking. So I would think it would come down to quality of data collected by the analytics tool and what you do with it that matters.

I removed Google Analytics from my site years ago when the GDPR came about. I rarely looked at it anyway, so to avoid annoying cookie notices, I removed it. It certainly wasn't doing anything for ranking if I was ignoring it.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Okay, it's mostly the ownership side that makes me think it can be penalizing.
Google is the most used search engine at the moment, and has been for years. It would be a shame to be penalized on it because I use another tool than theirs.

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cicirello profile image
Vincent A. Cicirello

Oh, I see. What if they penalize those that use a competitor? Not sure if there is a good way to answer that.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

It remains a little mystery ! Thanks for your comments ! ✨

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rickdelpo1 profile image
Rick Delpo

Removing GA definately speeds things up and avoids Cookies.

I wrote a quickie cookie free javascript app to save some Geo variables to an AWS S3 bucket. I use a Lambda function to pass Geo variables to my json file saved in S3.

click here for more
dev.to/rickdelpo1/removing-google-...

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obasi042 profile image
Obasi Nwosu

Google Analytics can provide valuable insights and data about your website's traffic and user behavior, it is possible that removing it could have unintended consequences. Do you think that Google uses data from Google Analytics as a ranking factor? How might removing this tool affect your website's visibility and search engine optimization efforts? What are the pros and cons of using or not using Google Analytics, and how do you weigh these considerations in your own decision-making process?

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

That are great questions!

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marsy_rox profile image
에볼루션카지노

I know that removing Google Analytics does not affect search rankings.
For more details in the Beginner's Guide to Google Optimization:
I would appreciate it if you could refer to my blog.
For your information, you need to use the translation function from Chrome to English.
Google Search Optimization Beginner's Guide

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Thanks!

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mneme profile image
Alex T

personal experience is telling me that it will affect the ranking.
I did two blogs to post two same contents: 1. blogspot 2. Wordpress
It turned out blogspot gave better search result but Wordpress not so good.

You can do a a test. similar domain name. exactly same web design structure and content. then try to see the ranking with and without.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

But isn't about WordPress or other CMS, just Google Analytics. And domain names haven't an impact to the ranking

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mneme profile image
Alex T

Blogspot was google. And i remember I used google analytics for blogspot. And I didn’t install any GA plugin or add any code for wordpress. I meant to make almost two identical website, one with GA and one without. Test it out.

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt ☕

Oh okay I understand