I’ve seen people discussing “server-side analytics” online several times, so I guess it is fine to use it, but not sure. It might be referring to the analytics results provided by any analytics platform, based on the data acquired via server-side tracking, but it is only my guess.
Yes, you are right. Server-side analytics tracking is considered a better practice than purely client-side tracking because it improves data accuracy and reliability by passing data from the browser into a controlled server environment.
It helps reduce data loss caused by tracking prevention mechanisms like ITP and provides greater control over data validation, making your marketing analytics more stable and actionable. While this approach requires some manual customization and expertise in Google Tag Manager to maintain correctly, the benefits for attribution and data ownership are significant.
Almost all popular analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics 4 and Piwik PRO, provide APIs that support server-side tracking. In addition, Stape offers its own analytics solution based on server-side GTM requests which provides additional insights into the quality of incoming data and helps you evaluate how effectively your server-side setup is working. Here’s more about Stape Analytics: Measure the Impact of Your Server-Side Tracking
thanks for clarifying !