Using Neo4J for Website Analytics by Francesco Gallarotti.
From the post:
Working at the office customizing and installing different content management systems (CMS) for some of our clients, I have seen different ways of tracking users and then using the collected data to:
- generate analytics reports
- personalize content
I am not talking about simple Google Analytics data. I am referring to ways to map users into predefined personas and then modify the content of the site based on what that persona is interested into.
Interesting discussion of tracking users for web analytics with a graph database.
Not NSA grade tracking because users are collapsed into predefined personas. Personas limit the granularity of your tracking.
On the other hand, if that is all the granularity that is required, personas allow you to avoid a lot of “merge” statements that test for the prior existence of a user in the graph.
Depending on the circumstances, I would create new nodes for each visit by a user, reasoning it is quicker to stream the data and later combine for specific users, if desired. Defining “personas” on the fly from the pages visited and ignoring the individual users.
Thinking I can always ignore granularity I don’t need but once lost, granularity is forever lost.