Bye bye Google Analytics, Hello Fathom

More than a few months back, I was complaining to a friend that I needed to find a way to get my website analytics off Google, because I didn't like feeding more data to Skynet (aka the GooglePlex, aka Uncle Goog).  He pointed me at Fathom, and their nice simple analytics and privacy-oriented setup.  I did some research and comparisons, and decided it might be just thing for me.

Life got busy and I never got around to looking into more deeply than skimming the web pages.  "I'm sure this will take more time than I have right now, and I'd like to make sure I use it properly before the trial period runs out."

(I admit I was also having a hard time starting fresh with "zero reads".)

Fast forward to a chat on the company slack this evening, where someone asked "Hey, Blair isn't using GA anymore, I'm pretty sure Josh pointed him at Fathom; Blair, what do you think about it?" and I had to admit I never got around to it.

So, I clicked through the signup ... and was done in a few minutes. This site is hosted on Ghost and changing the "crap I have in the page footers" is super easy to do from the web interface.  Fathom verified the change in a few seconds, and I am up-and-analytic'ing immediately.

Kudos to Ghost and Fathom, if only all technical bookkeeping tasks were so easy.