No WordPress blog installation is complete without a web analytics system to track the visitors. Users generally add traffic analysis system in two different ways. Either they insert the tracking code manually or they prefer to use a specialized plugin for the same. The latter approach is more favorable for technically challenged newbies and is used by a large number of bloggers. Some of these plugins present detailed traffic reports within the WordPress admin dashboard, while others simply help in injecting the tracking script at the desired place. There are hundreds of web analytics plugins available for WordPress, but large numbers of these plugins are either not being actively developed by the author or make your blog sluggish. I've handpicked some of the best web analytics plugins for WordPress bloggers that not only gives you impressive reporting features but are also updated frequently.
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Google Analytics for WordPress: It is one of the most popular web analytics plugin developed by Joost de Valk. It is extremely easy to install and gives you lots of metadata associated with posts and authors to get deeper insights into your blog's performance. You can also track outbound clicks very easily through this plugin. It also lets you track registration and login forms across your blog. Power users can configure several advanced options to completely harness the power of this useful plugin.
Google Analytics Master: This is one of the easiest ways to add Google Analytics universal tracking code within your WordPress site. Apart from embedding the default code, simple analytics ID or a customized code version can also be added. According to your preference, you can insert the tracking code either in the header or the footer of the page. It also fetches key statistical data which can be visualized within the blog dashboard.
Tallyopia Analytics: This useful web analytics plugin provides real-time reports of single as well as multi-site WordPress installations. It also has a rich set of WordPress shortcodes to embed analytics charts, maps, and tree-maps for easy visualization of information. You can also track your landing or sales pages very easily through this plugin. It also lets you download various traffic reports from the admin dashboard. You can also create a sidebar analytics widget for the visitors.
WP SlimStat: This is a lightweight yet extremely powerful real-time web analytics plugin ideal for professional bloggers. Apart from regular visitor tracking, it also tracks various social media actions on your blog like Google+ 1's and Facebook Like clicking. You can also segment your analytics data based on several metrics and parameters. It has a beautiful interface where you can drag 'n' drop data boxes from one location to another. You can also view visitors' location on a world map.
Heatmaps and Analytics: This is a powerful conversion tracking plugin along with heatmap facility. You can easily track your entire sales or conversion funnel through this plugin and can also know the most active area on a web page in terms of clicking activity. It has a gorgeous interface and it provides you with detailed reports from the captured data. This plugin is ideal for freelancers, affiliate marketers and small businesses that are using WordPress as a marketing tool.
Analytics Stats Counter Statistics: This is yet another handy web analytics plugin that provides real-time traffic statistics for your WordPress blog. It can also display the entire traffic data in a chronological fashion for better information tracking. You can also create a useful sidebar traffic widget very easily through this plugin. It also captures reports for web browser brands to get an idea which browser is most used by your website visitors.
Reporteur: This intuitive plugin fetches live data through Google analytics API and displays them in the form of detailed user-friendly reports within your WordPress dashboard. You can either view short summary reports or can drill down to get a custom report as per your requirements. This plugin is ideal for bloggers who do not want to use regular Google analytics interface. This plugin is lightweight and has a nice interface for displaying reports.
Google Analytics Counter Tracker: This awesome plugin can pulls the detailed Google Analytics data right within your WordPress dashboard. By crunching this data, the plugin presents it in a nicely formatted way. It can also group the statistics based on different filtering criteria. The displayed reports are responsive in nature so that you can visualize it even on mobile devices. It is available in over a dozen different languages.
WP-TwitterAnalytics: This plugin is ideal for Twitter power users who also blog professionally. You can analyze, compare, store and download your important Twitter conversations happening on your WordPress blog. You can store all this data in your WordPress database. This plugin also lets you embed Twitter analytics details in the form of a widget at the desired place on your blog. If required, you can also export the data in CSV format for offline usage.
Gravity Forms Analytics: If you're using gravity forms on your WordPress blog, this plugin is like icing on the cake. It modifies the default Gravity forms notification email and adds extra information about the visitors who fill the form. This information includes a number of visits, page views, browser, and geolocation. This lets you store extremely important information of those visitors who've used gravity forms on your blog. You can also integrate Google analytics data with the information collected by this plugin.
