Google Analytics to offer Opt Out for end users

<p>Do you use Google Analytics a lot? Do you find yourself relying heavily on it?

This news article brings a worrying announcement for site owners, be it of small or large scale.

Amy Chang, Group Product Manager of Google Analytics, posted a very concise announcement on the service’s blog, informing everyone how Google Analytics is about to change for all those who use it.

Focusing on those who unbeknownst to them share with website owners details that aid them to refine the information they share with visitors, Google is about to release a new feature on Google Analytics that will let users stop sharing that information, allowing them to keep their privacy.

Site owners ever since the Internet took off and became what it is today, have gained high interest in wanting to know what it is that their visitors want to see and read. Google Analytics provides information to site owners about their website traffic, allowing for their marketing and audience targeting to be fine-tuned.

While it is still early to tell, depending on how this Opt Out feature is brought out, it could have a heavy blow to web site owners all across the world.

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

(via Google Analytics blog)