Proxying Third-Celebration JavaScript as First-Celebration JavaScript (and the Potential Impact on Analytics)

First, try how extremely simple it’s to write down a Cloudflare Employee to proxy one other URL:

addEventListener(“fetch”, (occasion) => {
occasion.respondWith(
fetch(“https://css-tricks.com”)
);
});

It doesn’t have any error dealing with or something, however hey, it really works:

Now think about how some web sites offer you a URL to JavaScript to be able to do stuff. CodePen does this for our Embedded Pens characteristic.

That URL is:

https://cpwebassets.codepen.io/property/embed/ei.js

I can proxy that URL simply as simply:

Doing nothing particular, it even serves up the fitting content-type header and all the pieces:

Cloudflare Employees provides you a URL for them, which is decently good, however you may also very simply “Add a Route” to a employee by yourself web site. So, right here I’ll make a URL on CSS-Tips to serve up that Employee. Lookie lookie, it does simply what it says it’s going to do:

CSS-Tips.com serving up a JavaScript file that’s truly simply proxied from CodePen. I’m in all probability not going to go away this URL stay, it’s only a demo.

So now, I might do….

<script src=”/super-real-url/codepen-embeds.js”></script>

Proper from css-tricks.com and it’ll load that JavaScript. It’ll look to the browser like first-party JavaScript, however it is going to actually be proxied third-party JavaScript.

Why? Nicely no one goes to dam your first-party JavaScript. Should you have been a bit slimy, you would run all of your scripts for advertisements this option to keep away from advert blockers. I’ve blended emotions there. I really feel like when you wanna block advertisements it’s best to have the ability to block advertisements with out having to trace down particular scripts on particular websites to do this. Then again, proxying some third-party sources typically appears kinda nice? Like if it’s your individual website and also you’re simply attempting to get round some CORS challenge… that will be nice.

Extra within the center is one thing like analytics. I just lately blogged “Evaluating Google Analytics and Believable Numbers” the place I mentioned Believable, a third-party analytics service that “is constructed for privacy-conscious website house owners.” So, ya know, theoretically trustable and never third-party JavaScript that’s terribly worrisome. However nonetheless, it doesn’t do something to actually assist website guests and is within the broad class of analytics, so I might see it making its method onto blocklists, thus providing you with much less correct data over time as an increasing number of individuals block it.

The default utilization for Believable is third-party JavaScript

However as we talked about, only a few individuals are going to dam first-party JavaScript, so proxying would theoretically ship extra correct data. In truth, they’ve docs for proxying. It’s barely extra concerned, and it’s over my head as to precisely why, however hey, it really works.

I’ve performed this proxying as a take a look at. So now I’ve information from simply utilizing the third-party JavaScript immediately (from the final article):

MetricPlausible (No Proxy)Google AnalyticsUnique Visitors973k841kPageviews1.4m1.5mBounce Rate82percent82percentVisit Duration1m 31s1m 24sData from one week of non-proxied third-party JavaScript integration

And might examine it to an identical-in-length time interval utilizing the proxy:

MetricPlausible (Proxy)Google AnalyticsUnique Visitors1.32m895kPageviews2.03m1.7mBounce Rate81percent82percentVisit Duration1m 35s1m 24sData from one week of proxied third-party JavaScript integration

So the proxy actually does extremely recommend that doing it that method is much much less “blocked” than even out-of-the-box Believable is. The week examined was 6%¹ busier in accordance with the unchanged Google Analytics. I might have anticipated to see 15.7% extra Distinctive Guests that week primarily based on what occurred with the non-proxied setup (which means 1.16m), however as an alternative I noticed 1.32m, so the proxy demonstrates a stable 13.8% enhance in seeing distinctive guests versus a non-proxy setup. And evaluating the proxied Believable setup to Google Analytics immediately exhibits a reasonably staggering 32% extra distinctive guests.

With the non-proxied setup, I truly noticed a lower in pageviews (-6.6%) on Believable in comparison with Google Analytics, however with the proxied setup I’m seeing 19.4% extra pageviews. So the numbers are fairly wishy-washy however, for this web site, recommend one thing within the ballpark of 20-30% of customers blocking Google Analytics.

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