What the site knows about you
The short answer: how many people come and which pages they open. Who you are the site does not know and does not try to find out.
There is a visitor counter here
Since 17 August 2026 the pages carry Google Analytics. It counts visits: which pages are opened, from which sites and countries people arrive, phone or desktop, how long they read.
It is there for exactly one purpose: to see which parts of the catalogue turned out to be useful and which nobody opens. The catalogue is assembled by hand, and without that count the next month of work would be guesswork.
The counter sets its own cookies in your browser and sends data to Google. We receive only aggregate reports — lists of pages, countries and referrers. No individual person is visible in them.
Besides the pages you open, three things reach the counter that the page address does not show: what you searched for in the catalogue's own search and how many results came back, switching the theme and switching the language. The search query is sent a second and a half after you stop typing — and it is the text of the query that is sent. It serves exactly one purpose: to see what people look for in the catalogue and fail to find. If you never search and never touch the theme or the language, none of this is sent.
The counter loader is available in /assets/analytics.js. It loads Google Analytics on the production domain; local and preview versions do not start the counter.
When research data is downloaded, we also send the file name and page language to Google Analytics. This helps us understand whether readers use the data. This event does not send file contents, entered contact details or link parameters. A download is not a lead or a purchase.
The site does not start the counter when the browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. The smmgid_qa=1 parameter disables it for site testing until the tab is closed, storing only this flag in browser session storage.
How to opt out
- An ad or tracker blocker — almost any of them shuts Google Analytics out; nothing on the site breaks, every page still opens.
- Private browsing — the cookies do not survive the window closing.
- Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control — the site does not load the counter when these signals are enabled. Blocking third-party cookies alone does not opt you out of Google Analytics.
None of this makes reading worse: the counter takes no part in showing pages, and search, theme and language switching run on our side, not on its side.
What stays in the browser from us
Two things, both your own choice, and neither leaves your device:
- the theme (light or dark), if you switched it;
- the chosen language, if you changed it.
They are stored locally and are not sent anywhere.
What the hosting sees
The catalogue is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like any server on the network it sees the ordinary things needed to deliver a page: the address requested, the IP address, the browser type. Cloudflare also acts as protection against attacks on the site and therefore inspects requests.
That is a technical necessity of delivery rather than the collection of information about you — but it happens on Cloudflare's side and by its rules, not by ours.
Links outward
The catalogue links to the documents of platforms and tools. Following a link takes you to someone else's site, where their rules and their counters apply. We are not responsible for that and cannot influence it.
Feedback
If you write to us about a mistake, we keep your letter — the text itself and the address it came from. We use it only to look into the report and, if needed, to reply.
Changes
If anything written here changes, the page will be corrected, and the change will be visible in the project's history: the catalogue keeps all of its edits. Until 17 August 2026 this page began with the words «The short answer: nothing» and stated that there were no counters. That stopped being true on the day the counter was installed, and the page was rewritten the same day.