Product management director Amy Chang explained that the add-on stops data from being sent from an individual’s computer when they visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript to track usage.

The add-on is currently in beta and is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google’s own Chrome browser. It can be downloaded via Google’s tools page here.

Previously, people who wanted to opt out of Google’s Analytics tracking could only do so by disabling Javascript – not something many web users would know how to do.

For website owners, Google is also adding optional new code that can anonymise visitor IP address information that is used for geographic reporting.

“Website owners can now choose to have Google Analytics store and use only a portion of this IP address,” said Chang, though it will “somewhat reduce the accuracy of geographic data” in Analytics reports, she said.