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@paivaric
Last active January 30, 2024 17:21
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Google Analytics Proxy using Nginx to bypass Adblock and other blockers
server {
listen 80;
server_name your.domain.com;
location = /analytics.js {
# you have to compile nginx with http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_sub_module.html (this is not default)
# and http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_proxy_module.html (it's a default module)
proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding "";
sub_filter 'www.google-analytics.com' 'your.domain.com';
sub_filter_types *;
sub_filter_once off;
proxy_pass https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js;
break;
}
location / {
proxy_pass http://www.google-analytics.com/;
}
}
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//your.domain.com/analytics.js','ga');
# after this run your regular ga code
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXX-Y', 'auto');
ga('set', 'userId', 'your logged user id');
ga('send', 'pageview');
@bblanchon
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Hi @paivaric,

I checked my configuration several times; I'm pretty sure I didn't make any mistake in following your instructions.

However, I'm getting a lot of these errors:

 upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream,

Does it happen to you too?

Note that I'm not using the userId, nor Cloudflare.

Regards,
Benoit

@bblanchon
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Nevermind, I found the answer.

For some reason, IPv6 is not working correctly on my box.
Nginx timed out when it used the IPv6 address of www.google-analytics.com.

The solution was to add the following line to the server block:

resolver 8.8.8.8 ipv6=off;

And wait a long time (I would say 10m) until the cache expires.

@bblanchon
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I found a mistake in the NGINX configuration shown at the top.
It should not be:

proxy_pass http://www.google-analytics.com/;

but it should be:

proxy_pass http://www.google-analytics.com;

It's crucial to remove the trailing slash; otherwise, NGINX drops all the query parameters.

@latest-release
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Some adblockers are strict and even block urls like '/r/collect/'
Sot he trick is to replace sub_filter 'r/collect' 'rrr/upstreamer';
then add a block of code

location /rrr/upstreamer/{
        proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding "";
        sub_filter 'www.google-analytics.com'  'subcode.example.com';
        sub_filter_types *;
        sub_filter_once off;
        proxy_pass https://www.google-analytics.com/r/collect;
        break;
    }

@crispy-cat
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Please keep in mind if people are going out of their way to block GA, they probably really do not want their data being collected by Google

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