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Announcing Duplicator WP-CLI Commands (And How They Speed Up Backups)
Joella Dunn
Joella Dunn
John Turner
John Turner
You’ll need to analyze your website data to understand your audience, optimize content, and grow your online business. However, WordPress doesn’t include built-in analytics tools.
This is where Google Analytics WordPress plugins come into play. These plugins allow you to easily connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics.
You can view comprehensive data about your website visitors, traffic sources, popular content, and more. With a Google Analytics plugin, you’ll unlock valuable insights into how people find and interact with your site.
In this guide, we’ll recommend the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress!
A Google Analytics WordPress plugin is an add-on that connects your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account. It allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics tracking code throughout your site without manually editing files or theme functions.
All pageviews and events on your WordPress site will be automatically tracked and recorded in your Google Analytics account. You can identify metrics like:
However, Google Analytics can be confusing and not very beginner-friendly.
Google Analytics plugins bridge the gap between WordPress and the powerful Google Analytics platform – making it simple to gain comprehensive insights into your website’s performance and audience behavior.
These plugins make GA reports user-friendly. They’ll give you critical metrics without having to leave WordPress.
While manually adding the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress site is possible, it can be difficult.
Google Analytics plugins handle all the code integration for you. Just install the plugin, authenticate with your Google account, and tracking will be automatically enabled across your entire WordPress site.
Since these tools integrate with Google Analytics, you’ll get analytics that go beyond basic pageview tracking. You might be able to track affiliate links, scroll depth, form conversions, user logins, and custom events.
While the core functionality may seem simple, using a plugin eliminates a lot of technical headaches and unlocks more data than basic code integration alone.
Once you decide you need a Google Analytics plugin, you might not know where to start. To make your search easier, we tested some of the best options!
MonsterInsights is the most popular and highly-rated Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. With over 3 million active installations, it’s a favorite among beginners and experienced developers alike.
The plugin has an extremely user-friendly setup wizard that walks you through the entire authentication and configuration process. No coding is required!
A reporting dashboard gives you at-a-glance views into real-time website stats like page views, top posts/pages, top referral sources, and more.
If you run an online store, MonsterInsights will give you e-commerce reports. You can see and improve your conversion rate, revenue, average order value, percentage of new customers, abandoned cart rate, and other e-commerce metrics.
MonsterInsights offers much more customization than other analytics plugins. You can define custom events to start analyzing elements like affiliate link clicks, outbound link clicks, and downloads.
MonsterInsights is a freemium plugin, so there are both free and premium versions. The premium plans start at $99.60 per year and unlock advanced functionality like real-time analytics, site speed reports, and popular post widgets.
Overall, MonsterInsights is a comprehensive analytics plugin for WordPress sites of all sizes. If you want to find out more details about your audience and how they interact with your site, use MonsterInsights!
ExactMetrics is another top Google Analytics plugin that provides comprehensive tracking features along with detailed reporting directly in your WordPress dashboard. It was formerly known as Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress (GADWP).
Major companies like Microsoft and QuickBooks use ExactMetrics, so you know it’s a valuable tool for tracking analytics. Plus, it’s being used by over 1 million WordPress users like you.
With ExactMetrics, you’ll get in-depth real-time reports on your most popular posts/pages, top referral sources, top countries/cities, device types, and more. You can customize who can see these reports based on their user role.
Beyond just pageviews, ExactMetrics can track outbound/download links, affiliate links, PPC ads, and custom events.
The ExactMetrics core plugin is free. There is also a premium version with features like email summaries, unlimited pageviews & users, and more extensive reports. Plans start at $99.50 per year.
ExactMetrics delivers an impressive feature set along with granular control over your tracking, making it well-suited for bloggers and online stores.
Analytify is a freemium plugin that aims to make Google Analytics simple. Like other options on this list, it provides comprehensive tracking and reporting right within your WordPress dashboard.
With Analytify, you’ll get statistics that make sense. Instead of struggling to navigate the many pages of Google Analytics, Analytify puts all of your necessary reports on one page.
Analytify was built for complete beginners. Even if you have no technical experience, you can view real-time reports on page views, visitors, top pages/posts, referral sources, location data, and more.
There are many add-ons to extend Analytify’s default functionality. If you’re ready for more than basic stats, Analytify can help you track UTM campaigns and Google Analytics goals.
The free version of Analytify provides a solid set of basic tracking features. If you decide to upgrade, premium plans start at $75 annually.
Analytify markets itself as an easy solution for beginners who need an affordable and user-friendly analytics plugin.
Conversios is a Google Analytics plugin specifically designed for e-commerce stores built with WooCommerce. It focuses on providing enhanced e-commerce tracking and sales funnel analytics.
With Conversios, you can easily use the Google Analytics e-commerce tracking feature. You’ll visualize your sales funnel by knowing when users select a product, add it to their cart, begin checking out, add payment information, and make a purchase.
Conversios also offers conversion tracking for Google Ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Snapchat ads, Pinterest ads, and Microsoft ads. It has tons of features that’ll help you optimize your campaigns.
Conversios is a free plugin. If you need to track over 8 Google Ads or get AI-powered insights, you can upgrade starting at $99 a year.
While not as comprehensive as other plugins, Conversios is a great solution for WooCommerce stores looking to level up their e-commerce analytics.
If you’re a beginner, you might prefer a simpler analytics plugin that doesn’t require a Google Analytics integration. In your case, try WP Statistics.
WP Statistics is a free plugin that provides website analytics independent from Google Analytics. This alternative is GDPR-compliant because it uses cookie-less tracking. You’ll own 100% of your data and store it on your server.
All reports are easily accessible in a clean, user-friendly dashboard. This will show you your popular posts and pages, top referral sources, device types, geolocation stats, and even real-time online traffic.
Before installing WP Statistics, keep in mind that it stores data analytics on your server. Over time, this could take up too much space and slow down your website. Plus, it’ll increase the size of your backups.
On WordPress.org, WP Statistics is free. The company also offers premium add-ons for advanced reporting, customization, REST API, and more. These are priced individually or sold as a full bundle for $119 yearly.
While it can’t match the depth of Google Analytics, WP Statistics is handy for quick insights without any third-party dependencies. Since it’s free and simple, WP Statistics might be best for smaller WordPress sites or blogs.
GA Google Analytics is a little different from the other options on this list. Unlike alternative plugins, GA Google Analytics focuses on just adding Google Analytics tracking code to your website.
When you first create a Google Analytics account, you’ll get a tracking ID. Instead of manually adding this to your site’s code, GA Google Analytics does it for you. With a single click, the plugin authenticates with your Google account and inserts the tracking code across your WordPress site.
While lacking some of the extras found in more comprehensive solutions, GA Google Analytics gets the core tracking job done reliably. Just keep in mind that it doesn’t display any Google Analytics data in your dashboard.
The GA Google Analytics plugin is free to use, although its features are limited. If you need to add multiple tracking codes or custom code, upgrade to the pro version for $20 a year.
GA Google Analytics is a good option if you want to use Google Analytics but aren’t sure how to add its tracking code to your website.
WP Google Analytics Events is a free plugin with automatic event tracking. Without using code, you can create events for user actions.
Using WP Google Analytics Events, you’ll learn more about your visitors. However, it only tracks events, so it’s a more limited plugin.
Also, this version isn’t compatible with Google Analytics 4. If you’ve updated your Google Analytics version, try Goal Tracker instead. It’s the same plugin, just with updated compatibility.
There is a free version. You can also upgrade to WP Google Analytics Events Pro for $79 yearly.
WP Google Analytics Events makes it easy to create custom events from your WordPress dashboard.
Site Kit is Google’s official WordPress plugin that helps optimize your site for Google’s products and services. It integrates with different Google tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, AdSense, PageSpeed Insights, and Tag Manager.
Since Site Kit and Google Analytics are made by the same company, they integrate flawlessly. You’ll get up-to-date statistics, as well as support for the latest Google Analytics version (GA4).
The core plugin is completely free to use.
The Google Analytics integration is fairly basic, but Site Kit seamlessly integrates with Google’s ecosystem. Some WordPress site owners may appreciate having all of these tools in one spot.
Jetpack is a plugin suite with tools for analytics, backups, performance, and security. It was made by Automattic and has over 4 million active users.
While not solely focused on analytics, Jetpack has a stats feature. You’ll learn more about your visitors and how they got to your site.
Jetpack has reports on pageviews, popular posts/pages, top referral sources, and audience metrics. If you connect Jetpack Social, you can also track your social media following.
You can get Jetpack Stats for $8.33 per month. It’s also included in other Jetpack plans.
If you already use (or plan to use) Jetpack for features like backups or malware scanning, the analytics can be a handy add-on.
No, WordPress does not include any built-in website analytics tools. You have to connect your WordPress site to a third-party analytics platform like Google Analytics using a plugin or by manually adding a tracking code.
It’s possible to integrate Google Analytics tracking into WordPress without using a plugin. This involves manually adding the Google Analytics tracking code snippets into your WordPress theme’s functions.php file or header.php template. However, using a dedicated plugin is generally easier, especially for non-technical users.
You can install Google Analytics in 2024 using the MonsterInsights plugin. You’ll have to create a property in Google Analytics. In the MonsterInsights setup wizard, choose the new property. You’re now free to get analytics reports in your WordPress dashboard!
For a full step-by-step guide, read this tutorial on how to properly add Google Analytics to your website.
In my opinion, the best free Google Analytics plugin for WordPress is MonsterInsights. Its advanced features will help you make data-driven decisions for your website.
We hope this guide helped you find a Google Analytics WordPress plugin!
While you’re here, I think you’ll like these extra WordPress guides:
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