Cookieless visitor analytics

When someone opens your site, the server receives an IP address and information about which browser was used. From those we calculate a one-way identifier that cannot be turned back into the original details. Only that number is stored. The IP address is deleted right away, and it is never written to a log or to the database at any point.

The calculation includes a random number that is drawn again every night. That is why the same visitor's identifier differs today from yesterday's, and the two days cannot be linked after the fact. No persistent visitor identifier exists, so a visitor cannot be followed over time or profiled.

The country is resolved from the IP address before it is deleted, and stored separately as a country code. The lookup runs against a DB-IP table inside our own database, refreshed monthly, so the visitor's address is never sent to an outside service, not even to determine the country.

Visitors, visits and pageviews in real time, plus visit duration and bounce rate. Top pages, entry pages and exit pages. Channels, meaning where the traffic comes from: direct, search, social, email or paid. Campaigns, if you use UTM parameters in your links. A world map by country, along with browsers, operating systems and device types.

Visitor counts are real visitor counts. Previously the distinction rested on the browser identifier alone, so two different people on the same phone model and browser easily looked like one visitor. Now the visitor's real IP address travels from our delivery network through to the measurement, so unique visitors are genuinely unique even though the address itself is not kept.

A large share of website traffic comes from bots rather than people. Most analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Plausible, filter known bots out of their reports, so you cannot see how many there are or which ones visit your site.

In Kotisivukamu bots are separated from human visitors and shown as their own section in the dashboard. You can see, for example, whether search engines and AI services visit your site.

Some bots do not load the page the way a browser does, so ordinary analytics never notice them. Kotisivukamu tracks all traffic that reaches the site, so these bots show up too.

Our own tracking does not rule other tools out. If you need Google Analytics for ad conversion tracking, for online shop reporting, or simply because your marketing partner works with it, you ask Kamu for it. Kamu adds the Google Analytics measurement id to the site settings and the tag starts working on the next publish. The same goes for the Meta pixel and other tracking tags: the id is enough, you never paste a snippet anywhere.

A cookie banner is added to the site at the same time. The tracking code loads only after the visitor has given consent. The banner splits cookies into three categories: necessary, statistics and marketing. Necessary cookies are always on, Google Analytics falls under statistics and Meta Pixel under marketing. Visitors can accept all, allow only the necessary ones or pick categories themselves, and the choice is kept for six months. The choice can be changed at any time from a link at the bottom of the page, and if a visitor withdraws consent, the tracking code no longer loads.

The same mechanism handles embedded third-party services too, for example a YouTube video or an embedded map. They set cookies of their own, so before consent the embed slot shows a box with a button that opens the cookie settings. After consent the video or map loads in place as usual. Booking systems such as Timma or Vello are not embedded; they are linked with a button that opens the booking page in a new tab.

The cost is worth saying out loud. A third-party tag means two things in practice: the visitor meets a banner before the content, and the page loads more slowly because outside code is fetched from another server. Some visitors click "only necessary", so you measure fewer of them than you think. That is exactly why our own cookieless tracking is the default and stays on regardless: you get the basic numbers without a banner, and a tag is added only when there is a real reason for it.

Read more about what can be connected to a site: integrations and embeds. Requests go the same way as any other change to the site: you tell Kamu what you want.