The Effect of Analytics Tools on Energy Consumption of Websites
: Puhtila, Panu; Kivimäki, Lauri; Heino, Timi; Mäkelä, Jari-Matti; Rauti, Sampsa; Mäkilä, Tuomas
: N/A
: International Conference on ICT for Sustainability
: 2024
: 2024 10th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S)
: 335
: 345
: 979-8-3315-0529-5
: 979-8-3315-0528-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICT4S64576.2024.00041
: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10805288
In this paper, we study the effect of the web analytics tools on the energy consumption of the website they are deployed on. Our test setting comprises of four identical Wordpress websites which were equipped with varying number of analytics tools. We used an automated script that performed similar actions on every website for predetermined number of times, a Raspberry Pi which was running the script, and a DC meter used to record the energy consumption of the Raspberry Pi during the script execution. Our results indicate that using the web analytics tools has a clear impact on the energy consumption of websites, and that this increase is more severe with increasing amount of analytics tools. On average, the energy consumption is estimated to increase by 8.14% when 10 analytics tools are used, 6.08% when 5 analytics tools are used and 3.48 % when one analytics tool is in use. This suggests that the use of web analytics tools has a direct effect on the total global size of the carbon footprint of the internet usage. In the light of the ecological threats facing the world, our findings paint a dire picture of this aspect of the ICT industry.
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This research has been funded by Academy of Finland project 327397, IDA – Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture.