In a recent post on the excellent ROI Revolution blog, Michael Harrison posts a technique for showing visitor IP Addresses in Google Analytics reports using an Advanced Filter. This is an interesting technique and shows some creative thinking, but as he points out:

“…there is a huge caveat to this entire procedure. If you take a look at Item 7 in the Google Analytics Terms of Service, you’ll notice that you are not allowed to “associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties’ website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source”. So, using the filter above will break the ToS.”

Now, we’ve been hearing a lot about GA and privacy concerns recently, and this kind of comment indicates how seriously Google and their partners take data privacy. However, some rival Web Analytics vendors are keen to disparage GA, for example in the new blog from Applied Insights, the Clicktracks CEO opines on Google Analytics. Read the comments below this post for a more detailed response, but it seems clear that there are misconceptions about GA and privacy out there. We have posted on this subject before (e.g. GA Myth Busting) but it seems the myths are persisting.

Just to summarise the situation and answer the two most frequently asked questions:

• Google never pass Google collected data to any third party – whether it is GA or any other product.

• Google will never artificially adjust AdWords bid prices. Google’s senior representatives have said this publicly and with a little cold reasoning you can back this argument up with common sense. The AdWords system works really well for Google, so why would they develop what would have to be extremely complex, highly secret systems and jeopardise their entire business for the sake of a few extra pounds? Avinash Kaushik puts this better than we could on his highly-regarded analytics blog – “Google AdWords plus Google Analytics: Market Manipulation and Possibility of Mischief?“.

To sum up, Google and their partners take the issue of data privacy very, very seriously. This is evident at every level of the GA system; the Terms of Service, Google’s Privacy statement, the public and private behaviour of the GA Partners and the internal processes within the company itself. Anyone who thinks Google, a company under constant and intense public scrutiny, would risk everything by invading users’ privacy is just plain wrong.