what i learned about referrers building a cookieless analytics tool
i'm om yaduvanshi. i'm 18, an applied ai developer, and i built cloudline, a cookieless google analytics alternative. one script tag, under 2 KB, no cookies, no stored ips. what a pageview stores four things: page, referrer, screen size, time. that's it. device type comes from screen width. no fingerprinting. what i got wrong i treated referrer as solid data. yesterday someone corrected me.…
<name>Om Yaduvanshi</name> is an 18-year-old applied AI developer who created Cloudline, a cookieless Google Analytics alternative. His tool is a single script tag under 2 KB, with no cookies and no stored IPs. Pageviews stored in Cloudline consist of four pieces of information: page, referrer, screen size, and time. Device type is inferred from screen width.
Crucially, Yaduvanshi learned that referrer data is not always reliable. Browsers can strip or reduce referrer information based on the referrer-policy, which can change depending on whether a site is using HTTPS or HTTP. Initially, Yaduvanshi treated referrer data as solid information, but he learned from a correction that referrer is a best-effort data point and should be considered a hint rather than a definitive source.
For his analytics tool, Yaduvanshi measures three fields himself, so he trusts those, but acknowledges that the referrer field is a hint at best. Knowing which fields you measure versus receive is crucial for building analytics tools. Cloudline is currently free for early users while Yaduvanshi continues to develop it. You can try it at https://trycloudline.space.
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