Fathom – GDPR Compliant Analytics

Important news affecting all Google Analytics users in the UK

In January 2022, EU courts deemed that Google’s Analytics are illegal – in that personal data collected in Europe is sent to Google’s servers in the USA and “processed” over there – and that quite simply is in violation of GDPR.

Even though we’ve gone through Brexit here in the UK, we still have UK version of GDPR, and if we have people visiting our sites from EU countries, then EU GDPR would apply anyway.

So far Google Analytics has only been made illegal in Austria and France, but it seems likely only a matter of time before the local audience illegality extends to other countries including the UK – because the same principles apply.

Free analytics aren’t really free

For many years, Google Analytics has been a “free” service, so has been the obvious choice for businesses to use to measure their websites.

But whilst you don’t pay Google in money for the provision of the service you do agree to hand over the data that they process – and they can use the analytics from your sites along with millions of other sites across the World to build up profiles of people’s online activity – that’s something that privacy experts didn’t like, and that’s why we’re in this situation.

There is of course, also now a potential cost of legal fees, court cases and heavy fines to consider.

So it might be time to rethink your website analytics!

Fathom – a GDPR compliant alternative to Google Analytics

Fathom offer an ethical website analytics service that complies with GDPR, that comes at a low cost.
One of the things Fathom specifically does is work hard to ensure the analytics on your site don’t have the data protection issues that Google Analytics does.

Here are 7 good reasons to switch from Google Analytics to Fathom:

• Doesn’t use cookies (so more accurate tracking than Google Analytics)
• No cookie use also means no cookie consent banners
• EU isolated (so data remains in the EU to be GDPR compliant)
• Easier to use than Google Analytics (so you can easily find the results you need)
• Reliable company with thousands of customers (so no fear of your analytics being lost)
• Can handle viral content spikes without breaking a sweat (so your site won’t slow down when it’s popular)
• Coming soon: the ability to import historical Google Analytics into Fathom.