Yandex Metrica 8211 Google Analytics Alternative From Russia
Management Summary
Setup and registration
The installation on the website is carried out as you would expect from other tools: you create a free account within a few minutes and upload a small code snippet to the website.
Metrica also offers its own snippet for integration via a tag management system such as Google Tag Manager. Tealium even has a predefined tag for Yandex. In addition, some well-known content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal offer ready-made plugins.
Qualitative reports
In addition to aggregated reports, Yandex Metrica also provides qualitative reports such as:
- Clickmaps– Where do users click? It doesn’t matter whether the clicked element is linked or not.
- Link maps– Which links are clicked on?
- Scrollmaps– How far and how many users scroll on the page?
- Form Analysis– How long do visitors interact with which form fields? Where do you stop?
- Screen recordings– Look over the user’s shoulder. The sessions are “filmed,” so to speak.
It is precisely these qualitative tools that make Yandex attractive to many website operators. It definitely represents an alternative to Hotjar, and possibly also to more advanced tools like Crazy Egg or Click Tale.
What is missing?
Yandex Metrica hardly misses any feature that the free version of Google Analytics offers. Similar to Google Analytics, which scores points with its integration into the entire Google world, Metrica is also anchored in the Yandex world. The only question is, how relevant is Yandex Direct compared to Google Ads for your own marketing portfolio? The same applies to the search engines or map services of the two providers. Outside the Russian market, this integration into Yandex Kosmos is only moderately interesting, but in Russia itself it is even more attractive.
There is no direct connector for Data Studio, but you can connect via the paid Supermetrics.
What Yandex Metrica is completely missing: custom events. On the one hand, this is compensated for by a few standard metrics such as downloads or external links, but on the other hand, by a maximum number of targets of 200. Instead of 20 in Google Analytics. Goals, such as submitting a form, can be triggered directly, without the detour of an event. Still, I miss the GA events. With its three dimensions and one metric, Google Analytics Events can convey a lot of information, but on the other hand I am (almost) unlimited in the number of events.
The pricing model
The Yandex website is clear here: there is no pricing. Yandex Metrica is completely free and pretty much limitless:
| Benefits | Limits |
| traffic | Unlimited |
| Number of sites per account | Unlimited |
| Support service (email) | Unlimited |
| Sampling | None |
Source:https://metrica.yandex.com/about/info/pricing, April 15, 2019
A free tool with no traffic limit and no sampling? Do we have a Google Analytics killer here? Not quite, because:
Yandex and data protection
Even if Yandex is officially a Dutch company: Since the servers are operated in Russia, a legal basis for the cross-border exchange of personal data must be created as a prerequisite. This can be done, for example, by concluding the EU standard contractual clauses. This method is tried and tested and is regularly used by companies – for example in India. To do this, the categories of those affected (“Which groups of people are affected?”) as well as the relevant categories of personal data (e.g. IP address, e-mail address, name) must be used in the contracts, which must otherwise be adhered to unchanged.
Since the legal situation for minorities in Russia is sometimes diametrically opposed to European jurisprudence, it must be carefully examined in each individual case which personal data can actually be transferred without harming the rights and freedoms of those affected. This applies especially – but not only – to data that is particularly worthy of protection, such as health data, political opinions or sexual orientation. This requires a data protection impact assessment (DPIA – Data Privacy Impact Assessment), which must be submitted to the data protection authority if necessary.
Furthermore, Russia – like China – has reserved the right of authorized authorities to intervene on user data that is processed in their territory (the USA can do this worldwide for American companies through the CLOUD Act). The political plans are currently moving in the direction of all data being cached locally before it leaves Russia (China model). Whether and when this will happen is questionable – but if this situation occurs, then even the standard contractual clauses probably cannot guarantee the “adequate level of protection” that is mandatory under the GDPR. In plain language: The service should be stopped immediately.
And: If you want to use some of the qualitative functions such as Replay, the session recording tool, you definitely need the visitor’s consent.
Conclusion
Yandex Metrica offers a great package of functions and features. And all that toofree and without sampling. In principle, we really like Yandex Metrica. With a data processing agreement you can also use it in a GDPR-compliant manner, but you must be aware that the general conditions can change at any time and make GDPR-compliant use impossible.This lack of sustainability makes Yandex Metrica particularly interesting as a secondary tracking toolt. But for anyone who is active on the Russian market, it is almost mandatory.
