If google analytics is used without cookie storage, are all pageviews a "new" user?

Question

I have a little web browser in my application that hits a webpage using Google analytics. That little web browser has cookies and local disk storage disabled.

Are my user analytics going to be skewed because of this? Is every user reported as a new user when in actuality they are an existing one?

Answer 1

Yes, your Analytics data is going to be impacted. For example, you will not be able to differentiate hits between Sessions and Returning Visitors. As you say, each Visitor will be reported as a new one.

Analytics uses the Client ID parameter to uniquely identify a Visitor. As the official Field Reference states:

Client ID

Required for all hit types.

Anonymously identifies a browser instance. By default, this value is stored as part of the first-party analytics tracking cookie with a two-year expiration.

If your application can generate a unique key for each user and persist it elsewhere that in cookies or localStorate, you could still create your own Client ID:

Disabling Cookies

By default, analytics.js uses a single cookie to persist a unique client identifier across pages. In some cases you might want to use your own storage mechanism and send data directly to Google Analytics without the use of cookies.

You can disable analytics.js from setting cookies using the following:

ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', {
  'storage': 'none',
  'clientId': '35009a79-1a05-49d7-b876-2b884d0f825b'
});

When you disable cookie storage, you will have to supply your own clientId parameter except for the special case where you are using cross-domain linking parameters.

Answer 2

Yes. Google Analytics uses the client ID to determine if a user is new or returning.

Note, if your users are logged in (probably not though without cookies), then you can use the user ID feature to determine new from returning users.