Turning off Google Analytics for Local Hugo Server

April 3, 2020

TL;DR: If using Google Analytics, most Hugo themes load the tracking script even when running locally. This causes a bunch of bogus page views when writing a new article. Creating separate config files for development and production is an easy way to fix this.

To solve this, take advantage of the fact that Hugo allows for specifying multiple configuration files. In this case, create a separate “production” config.toml file without the googleAnalytics code specified and rearrange the directory structure as follows:

├── config
│   ├── _default
│   │   └── config.toml
│   └── production
│       └── config.toml

When serving locally with hugo serve the config in _default will be used, but when generating the site with hugo, Hugo will default to the production configuration.

If you do want to test the production configuration locally, you can specify the environment via a command flag:

hugo serve --environment production

The full documentation for this feature can be found on the gohugo.io website.

I hope that helps anyone who encounters the same situation!