Does Google penalize your page rank for not using Google Analytics?
This may be completely anecdotal, but I nixed GA and other Google products from my business recently (and personal life), in favor of supporting privacy-focused small business alternatives, and I've noticed that my Google page rank and overall page view counts from Google have fallen by about 2/3. A lot of keywords I was #1 for, I've now fallen down considerably, even onto the next page, or dropped entirely. Looking at the data, the change happens a couple days after I removed the Google products, after running the alternatives side-by-side for a couple weeks. Am I crazy or is this actually a thing?
No, they (Google employees in public online spaces) clearly said that Google Analytics metrics are not used for ranking. I am not sure if this is the official answer, but I personally didn't see any rank issues after I removed Google Analytics from my site.
Kind-of related, hoping not to hijack the conversation: Does Google ADs give an advantage in SEO positioning?
Even if not directly, could the traffic increase from Google ADs be viewed as a positive factor even for organic results?