Running a WordPress blog, it’s far enough to have a good hosting, beautiful theme and content. It’s also important to analyze your website.
You need to find out who your audience it, who are visiting your site, where they are coming for, what they are reading. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with built-in stats feature to monitor traffic and visitors, but there are certainly a few plugins you can use to keep the record of your data amount, tracking of the users and visitors, tracks the offline activity, etc. A WordPress statistics plugin is a necessary thing for your website..
It’s extremely difficult to find the best WordPress plugins as there are over 29,000 plugins available in the WordPress plugins directory.
I’m going to feature over 10 plugins. I’m not using all of them, I try to use as minimum plugins as I can. Why? Because using too many plugins affects the performance of your blog. So install plugin that you really need.
1- JetPack by WordPress.com
This is the best stat plugin for WordPress and, is exclusively for the users of WordPress, which let them know about the daily users, visitors, customization, mobile visitors, tools, traffic, etc.
I’m using Jetpack from the day I started this plugin. It comes with over 25 modules to manage almost everything on your blog. I definitely recommend it.
It has additional features like:
- Augments your visitors, gets you spam free comments, gets you notification, likes, social sharing, other tools and enhanced distribution.
- This plugin has themes available for the table and mobile users and they can be customized easily as well.
- It supplies the complete security to your WordPres website and has the anti-virus sites like Akismet, Single Sign On, and JetPack Monitor.
- You can easily customize the whole website as per your own taste. There are options like Infinite Scroll, Sidebar Widgets, Custom CSS, Tiled Galleries and much more.
2- Google Analyticator:
With this plugin, you can put in JavaScript code to allow the Google Analytics log in your website. There are different widgets available in this plugin which makes the data appear easily on your admin page and in the blog. The additional features are:
- Carry the download link trail.
- Speed tracking of site.
- Displays you the visitor’s statistic information in a widget.
- Any code provided by the Google can be tracked.
- Provides the translations into local languages.
- It is easy to install.
- It has this feature of concealing the Google UID descends.
3- kStats Reloaded:
Coming from the old, but very useful site StatPress, the kStat Reloaded is much prompt and advance WordPress statistic plugin. This plugin has some amazing features for the WordPress blogs. It lets you inform about the number of visitors, the timing of their visit, and the place of their visit, the page visits you get and what is the indexing of your WordPress blog right now.
This advanced plugin kStat has the revised features of storing and keeping the information about the visitors and users. This plugin has bit difficult database schemes.
4- Blog Stats by W3Counter
This one of free statistics plugin for WordPress plugin has the widget which it inserts to your sidebar automatically with the tracking code. This plugin is very much in use by the webmasters. It is simple to use and can be run by any user even if they do not know much about dealing with these plugins. The plugin is so much popular that it gets more than 30 downloads per day. It tells you all about the number of daily visitors, top posts, searches and traffic coming your way with the exact numbers.
5- WassUp Real Time Analytics
This is very useful site for those who want to keep an eye on the visiting and the activity of the visitors. The WassUp has an in detail console, which shows you that what are your visitors doing on the website.
You get to see an individual act rather than the gathered data of the visitors. You will get to see that what keyword, time period, type of visitors, etc.
This WordPress stat plugin also shows you that which visitor is online and what are they up to from which location. There are two spams detected functions are present in this plugin.
6- Analytics 360
It gathers the Google Analytics and MailChimp’s Analytics360 plugin data into one dashboard. You can check that which users are adding into your mailing list and what is the status of current address and the new addresses. With the tab of campaign traffic, you can individually assess that how much traffic is coming towards your website with the single email campaign.
This stats plugin for WordPress will help you in finding out that that is the new visitors coming to your website through which reference or if they are visiting directly. Along with these main services, there are so many other services by the Analytics 360 plugin as well.
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7- WP-Stats-Dashboard
WP-Stats Dashboard is one of best wordpress stats plugin. This multipurpose plugin helps you in getting the stats about your social engagement, ranking in the Alexa, blog traffic and much more. The additional features are like:
- Translate your page for the external users.
- Chase the social metrics of 50+.
- Finds the profile.
- Number of stats dashboard widgets.
- Provides you the sidebar widgets such as: every day graphs, social metrics, top authors, etc.
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8- StatPress Reloaded
This WP stat plugin has the brilliant offers for the WordPress blogs. You can check out the keyword search, browsers, visitors, OS information without any issue.
You can easily get the information about your blog once you install it on your WordPress blog. It can tell you the stats by showing it on the sidebar. With the limited space; the plugin removes the older documentation. There are several language options as well.
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9- Advanced Blog Metrics
Progress your blog’s performance by adding this plugin to your WordPress blog. It has the features like:
- Tells you the right time to post your release.
- How many comments you received in a day.
- Tells you the highest number authors who made the comments.
- What is the time when your post is getting the most number of comments?
10- WP Statistics
This plugin has its own way of collecting, generating, informing you about the blog statistics. It gets to know you about the:
- Pages which are getting the highest number of visitors.
- Repost of statics through email.
- Who is visiting your website right now?
- How many people are online on the website right now?
- Updates to the GeoIP database.
My Suggestions
All above best WordPress stats plugin are the best to use for your WordPress site. Though, it is alright when you install only one plug-in as the entire above mentioned plug-in have the best features.
When it comes to choosing from the above given best WordPress stat plugin, then Jetpack seems like the most appropriate one for the WordPress statistic plugin. I recommend Jetpack because it comes with lots of built in features like social sharing, custom css, shorten link, socialize, mobile theme and so on.
How do you track stats on your blog? What’s your favorite stats plugin for WordPress?
hi, thanks for nice post.
im looking for a specific plugin that need to track the users (colaborators and editors) on frontend. i need to obtain the statistics for each users (colab/editor) of this site and what pages they are visiting. If have he flux too its a good solution.
Because i have 6 sales persons on site that have some ready answers and specific pages for them. i need to track each user, and what pages they are accessing. its possible? any idea of plugin that can make this job?
tks a lot!
marcelo
This is not i want. I need to display statistics for my members too in public pages . Some data as:
– how many posts today (and also show an evolution graph over a month or other period)
– how many new users today vs other periods with graphs
– how many comments on a period, today, etc
– i want let my users write and send posts by category, so i want to display a widget in user page showing how many posts he has published and this report sorted in categories (ex: you have 10 posts : 5 in news category, 4 in jokes category, 1 in general stuff Categ)
– to display on homepage a graph showing that the site has 50 posts and splitted by category and shown as a piechart to allow users have an fast and clear image of site content on a single show of the public dashboard
– number of posts by user
– i would also like to define other graphs in own user account page in different widgets.
Thats it’s the stuff i need. What you put here has no use for me. I don’t want only admin statistics, i want to select what statistics to be shown to different types of users and in which way: widgets or dedicated pages.
Can you help me please with suggestions?
I would think that having something ultra-accurate would be super-important to bloggers. I mean, what the hell lol. This is kind of a lengthy post but I am at my wit’s end.
I use THREE trackers and they all say something different. Its not just by one or two visitors either. The differences are significant. I don’t know who to trust in terms of visitors. Its quite annoying.
I use Slim Stats – primarily something new I am doing. Been using it for about a year. It also tracks how many times my posts are read – which to me is important because then I can know A) if people are reading my posts and B) if the topics I AM writing are what people want to read.
According to Slim Stat: Yesterday I had 30 visitors. Today I had 11?
I also use StatPress. I have been using StatPress on ALL of my websites for around 5 years. Its one I always trusted because I didn’t think there wasn’t a reason to not trust it. It was only when I added SlimStat that I was confused at the overall differences in stats that each one states.
According to Statpress: Yesterday I had 85 visitors. Today I had 67 visitors. That’s a pretty significant difference than what Slim Stat is saying.
I also use AwStats which is included, of course, with CPanel. I don’t rely on this a lot because according to everyone else its THE worst Stats program to rely on. So I just look at it once in a blue moon.
According to AWStats: Today I had 9 visitors. Yesterday I had 97 visitors.
lol. All different programs. All different stats – significantly! So who the heck do I believe?!? SMH. I understand the logistics of why all 3 are different. I simply don’t know which one to believe and put more faith into. According to Slim Stat, for example, no one reads my posts. And yet I make around $150 on Amazon Affiliates a month. Yes, I do social networking too. But, I mean, some sales have to be coming from my website because according to FB and twitter Analytics not THAT many people are clicking on my social posts.
Is there a specific program from the 3 above that people trust the most? Or is there another one I should be considering?
Also. Are PAID apps going to be more accurate than free ones? I use all free ones.
I just started used Jetpack for some of my sites and love it. I never really knew what it was used for until I read your post.
Hi Ammar!
Great post! I’m using Jetpack for stats and WP statistic plugin too and there are huge different between the numbers. For example Jetpack: Weekly visitors 99, views 137. By the WP statistic the same week: visitors 399, Views 1213…. It’s a huge different! Can u please help me why?
Thank you!
Great article Ammar!
I’m searching a statistics tool to be able to analyze deeply my blog. I would like to find a tool/plugin to filter my post by languages or by a specific period.
I checked JetPack, it’s so complete but it’s not so flexible to have data from periods of time and for languages. But it’s great that it don’t have the activity made by the administrators and writers.
Google Analytics it’s a great tool to analyse how to people arrive at the blog and wich is their activity, but also is not many flexible to filter by language and there is a lot of ‘noise’ with the management activity.
Do you know another tool or configuration of the existing ones that solve my problem?
Best regards!
Hi, Ammar – I have been unable to find a stats tracker that shows me length of time spent on the page being visited on my blog. I’m on WordPress & have been using StatCounter.com, which is great but is limited in giving me that information. So far I’ve used only free trackers, but am ready to consider paying for a better one. Any suggestions?
I’m really looking for something that will give me percent of male and female visitors, age breakdowns, and states I’m reaching. Any recommendations?
That’s definitely possible, Christin. Have you heard about Google Analytics? It gives more control over tracking visitors. You can easily find their demographics i.e age or gender.
You can read more about Analytics here analytics.google.com/analytics
Let me know if you face any problem. I’d love to help you!
Thanks for the quick response! I went to the site you directed me to and I found instructions about how to add the tracking ID to a business wordpress account and I don’t believe my site is a business account because I know I didn’t spend $299 on it. It is self-hosted though. Is there a plugin that would do the trick? Thanks!
Hi Christin,
Sorry about the confusion. It is actually FREE. You do not need to pay a single penny. You even don’t need a plugin to implement Google Analytics on your website. All you need to do is to login to analytics with your gmail account and add your site there. Verify it by adding code to your website. After that, it will start tracking your visitors.
Well it is interesting to see this list of plugins for wordpress, otherwise I was more used to Google analytics when i had started with blogger. Will try jetpack
Hey Ammar, excellent list of some of the most useful statistics plugins for WordPress. I personally use JetPack site stats for tracking down traffic of my sites, but sometimes it doesn’t respond, so I switched to W3Counter Blog Stats for dashboard stats. It’s a very good plugin indeed, provides almost accurate stats as Google Analytics. I highly recommend this one plugin to all other users :)
Thanks for this list Ammar.
I had the Statpress plugin installed, but it turns out that that causes my sites to load very slow, so I uninstalled that.
Is there a plugin among these 10 plugins, where you can enter the amount of visitors to start with? Because I already had many visitors and wrote down those numbers from my sites.
Johanna
No Johanna, there’s no plugin in my knowledge who can do this. But if you’re using Analytics, you shouldn’t worry at all. Their stats are 100% accurate and even if you change plugins or themes, Google analytic stat will remain same before and after.
Cheers!
Thanks Ammar for sharing this great list ! I am still not convinced, however, that the numbers aren’t more than a little inflated… I have a 1 day old site. I’m using ‘Statpress’ and ‘SO Jetpack Stats Only’. While StatPress is showing me 118 visitors today ‘SO jetpack Stats Only’ is showing me ” 0″. Not even close… probably the StatPress data comes from bots, not people!!!
Thanks for sharing this great list of statistics plugins. I tried both StatPress Reloaded and Jetpack but Jetpack is showing much less daily pageviews in comparison to StatPress Reloaded. Though Alexa Rank is still rising. Is it something wrong with any of the plugin or what? Any idea?
Thanks in advance :-)
thx for the post! In your opinion, what is the best plug-in that allow me to send a weekly report to a selected set of e-mail address?
Well, I don’t think so there is any plugin to email you stats weekly.
Why not use access stats manually everyday or once a week?
This is not laziness :-) . Just want to keep a couple of friends aware of what is going on.
Maybe I should consider the mail reports of google analytics
There is statcounter.com to do that.
Hi dear,
Is there any plugin which counts unique post views. Because I want to track unique post views so that I can pay my content writer for the unique post views per month. In short I want to monetize my content writer work.
I am using Post Profit Stats but it is not working fine.
Personally, Jetpack works very well especially for a plugin. However, the worst part about it is when it loads up, it brings tons of ‘website speed issue’ which could affect your site speed. The changes are small so at times, you might not notice it.
Nonetheless, if I have to choose, Jetpack is definitely having my vote for this.
Thanks for sharing mate :)
sure – I found personal-statistics-for-authors plugin, but it is not what I expected…
Hi, I am looking for a snippet/plugin for authors to see the number of visitors ot their posts.
Do you know any?
Did you searched for MOST VIEWED POST? plugin or something related?
Great post Ammar. I use Google Analytics and have just installed Jetpack…
One stat I need for my KPI’s is a monthly total of blog views (so reporting on Posts and not Pages). I can’t seem to do this with either of those, is there another plugin you can recommend?
Thanks!
Thanks so much for revealing this plugin.
I installed the Jetpack, and after installing successfully, activate it on my wordpress. Askimet thereafter instructed I disable it or input my Askimet key. I have no problem with that…
But it’s just that there’s no provision made for me to put the key before or after installing. So what I did is to deactivate it.
What do you think I should do?
Thank you!
Use Jetpack and for protecting blog from spam comment use “GASP” plugin, you can also try commmentluv premium :)
Let me know if you have any other issue?
Thank you! I was searching for one or two plugins because Jetpack is eating a lot of memory and my host provider said i have to delete it :(
which host you are using?
Thanks a lot Amar.
Do you know a way to let my Authors see the stats also?
Hi,
Use Jetpack, There is option in setting to allow users to access the stats. :)
Thanks :) And I wil
nice article but I am confused ! JetPack ot statpress.. what you use ?
Jetpack is perfect! :D
thanks for reply!
Well done…Ammar
Definitely its very keen comparison……
your articles are great….I book marked ur web page……
Thanks.
Jet Pack is awesome. I really love it
From all the list you have given me i think jetpack is the best plugin to use because of awesome features i will recommend that only…
I am using Jetpack for my site but sometimes I am also checking my stats via awstat and I get different numbers everytime. One day Jetpack was showing no visit to a post on my blog but the same day I got two comments submitted on the same post. I was really surprised to see that how this could be possible. One thing I can assure that the comments could not come from the bots because I have already used Captcha everywhere. Tell me if anyone can guess the truth.
You should use Analytics by Google. Its best! :) and perfect..
i liked statcounter and jetpack, both are enriched with required detail and statcounter best option is for exit link activity that you can check adsence clicks…..
#2 Statpress reloaded hasn’t been updated in 4 years. Scary.
You can try jetpack. It’s just awesome! :D
after reviewing I still vote for google analytic for tracking your site traffic.
Anyone know (care) what info is being communicated back to wordpress with the jetpack plug-in?
Sorry? I did not get you! Please explain.. :)
How can people continue to use and praise Google Analytics and other “free apps” that are not really free? You feed the gravy of your website traffic and all of its usage stats back to the mother ship and they give you a brief snapshot of what’s going on. Wow, thanks a lot, Google! What they in turn are doing with it, well actually you have no clue other than knowing they are making money with it, and at the very minimum selling your info to advertisers. It’s time to understand that Google Apps are NOT free apps and you are giving away a constant stream of information of everything you and your clients/customers are doing as a free gift to Google, wrapped in a nice package and all for mostly their own benefit. So the free lunch is in reality, Google’s. If you want stats, use one of the packages that does not funnel all your and your customer’s activities back to some distant mother ship in the sky where you have no idea what they are going with your information (but you have a pretty good idea). The web has turned into a lapdog for Google and their tracking machine. How many business models are there that you know of that constantly give away free stuff? Not many. Wise up world, there is NO FREE LUNCH. Track your own web statistics and leave Google and other world-wide scanning machine out of the picture.
I use nStatistic and that seems pretty easy to use as well, strongly recommend for everyone.
Thank you for the list, at least I know there are somany great plugins available – Ferb
I am using StatCounter presently. Now, i am going to use JetPack as per your recommendation. Hope for the best. :)
The Jetpack dont show the real stats ……the real traffic would be half of it or even less…
It appears that jetpack counts your own visits though, unless you ask it to not count logged in users…which could be bad…
Know which plugin would NOT include your own views?
Thanks a million!
i .like this stats plugin, which one is not heavy for blog?
Try Jetpack. Its best ;)
But the stats shown by jetpack is in consistent with the data found og google analytice, which is the accurate data?!
Jetpack shows total Pageviews while analytics shows all info like visitors, pageviews, unique visitors :D
Why did I never see WordPress.com Official Stats Plugin in my wordpress.com blog? I always found jetpack.
WordPress.com blogs have less facilities than a self hosted WP blogs.
Yes, but it says WordPress.com Official Stats Plugin.. i thought it was a wordpress.com plugin.. I use self hosted wordpress now but use jetpack for the stats …
May be it works both for Selfhost WP blogs and WordPress.com . I am using Jetpack and it is best…
I have Jetpack and Kstats installed on my blog, and they give very different numbers, so I have to conclude they are measuring different things. One weekend, Jetpack told me I got no visitors at all, while Kstats said that I got more than 30 both days. Since I had some people sign up for a class that weekend, I have to conclude that the Jetpack number (0) was wrong.
I would definitely like to learn what is going on here.
May be Kstats is catching spiders and bots too. I am currently using Statpress and Jetpack both of them shows different stats but I think jetpack is best!
I had to uninstall Jetpack because a recent update to Jetpack locked me out of the dashboard completely. I was able to recover by using FTP to go in and rename the Jetpack plugin directory so that the WP loader couldn’t find it, which allowed me to log in again. While I was logged in, I used FTP to rename the Jetpack directory back to its original name so that I could delete it using the dashboard. Since then, I had deleted Jetpack from every WP site I own.
I still have no clue why the numbers reported by Jetpack and Kstats don’t seem to have any correlation at all.
Awesome list Ammar. I saw your Alexa rank today and i am really impressed that you are going very well. keep it up.
I also saw this. Its increasing day by day.
Its Decreasing Day By Day ;-)
BTW, Nice List I am using GA & WP JetPack currently.
To be frank this is a great post. I made a wordpress blog. But I am bit struggling with it yet. So these plugins will be helpful to me too.
Thanks a lot for sharing this, I’ll bookmark this for further referrence.
Good luck
Thanks dear. I will share some great articles in future. So stay tune with us!
Hey nice post you left web ninja stats (Google analytics) i personally recommend it but nice post.
Nice post bro..I am using Jetpack for my site.
I am too Using Jetpack. It is best stat plugin. Thats why i put it on no.1
compared to google analytic which is more accurate? GA vs. Jetpact Analytic?
TY
Analytics is best..
these are great plugins, thanks for sharing.
Yes JamesW. These are top and best stats plugins for WP
Great list man, thanks.