What Is the Best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress?

Last Updated on March 4, 2019 by Sunny Staff

There are countless to choose from, but which Google Analytics plugin for WordPress is the best?

WordPress is one of the top website platforms in the world. An estimated 30 percent of all websites are hosted on WordPress, including USA Today, CNN and TIME.com. WordPress’s popularity is due in no small part to its ease of use, especially with plugins. A plugin is a software that is added to a WordPress website to extend its functionality or add new features. Using WordPress plugins, you can deeply expand the functionality of your website, often without hiring a web developer or learning complicated code.

A Google Analytics plugin is arguably the most important of all. Data provided by Google Analytics is essential to learning about your audience, helping you to identify your customers, learn what resonates with them, and track their journey. With a Google Analytics plugin, you can gather this information all from within your WordPress admin account.

There are thousands of plugins available, so which should you use?

Google Analytics plugin

Here are five of the most popular plugins for Google Analytics:

  • Google Analytics Dashboard for WP is a free plugin, and it offers comprehensive statistics and detailed analysis. With this plugin, you can view metrics such as visits to your site, bounce rate, number of visitors, organic searches, pages per visit and more. You can dive more in-depth with Page reports and Post reports, which provide detailed performance metrics. This plugin also includes real-time tracking, allows code customization and allows you to track events including emails, downloads, affiliate links and emails.
  • Analytify.io is designed to make Google Analytics simple with a sleek, yet detailed interface. It provides real-time analytics, social media info, top keywords and much more. Analytify can help you optimize every area of your site, even if you’re not an expert. It also provides page level and custom post analytics and front-end reporting. Merchants will appreciate the enhanced e-commerce tracking. There is a free version with limited functionality; pricing ranges from $29 to $199 per year.
  • Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights is one of the most comprehensive Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It highlights the most important statistics in real time, so you’ll know what your highest performing content is at a glance. There’s also a handy referral detection feature, which shows how users find your site. With MonsterInsights’ Pro version, you can use e-commerce and goal tracking to track user searches, sales, downloads, affiliate links, emails and other events. MonsterInsights has a free version with limited features; otherwise, it’s $89 a year for the pro version and another $49 for the e-commerce add-on.
  • Google Analytics by ShareThis allows you to add Google Analytics’ tracking code to your website without editing the website files. Once you’ve installed the plugin, you can see reports from Google Analytics in your WordPress dashboard. Information available includes visitor trends, traffic sources and trending content, which shows your best-performing pages at any given time. ShareThis is a free plugin and is mobile responsive, so it works on screens of all sizes.
  • Google Analyticator offers a wide range of features to view web analytics. Like ShareThis, Analyticator is free and easy to install without modifying core website files. A widget on the dashboard displays an in-depth graph of visitors in the last 30 days, a summary of site usage, top referrers, top pages, and top searches. You can also track outbound links and download links.

These simple Google Analytics plugins will allow you to analyze visitor activity to improve your website’s user experience. You can monitor visitor traffic, track marketing campaign performance through conversions, view webpage performance, all directly in the WordPress backend, without needing to log into your GA account. When deciding which tool to use, it comes down to priorities and personal preference. The most important thing is that you’re gathering data and using it to inform your customers’ user experience on your website.

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