GTM4WP – A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress vs Koko Analytics – Privacy-Friendly WordPress Analytics

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s free tool for everyone to manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags as well as other code snippets using an intuitive web UI. To learn more about this tool, visit the official website. This plugin places the GTM container code snippets onto your WordPress website so that you do not need to add it manually. Multiple containers are also supported! The plugin complements your GTM setup by pushing page meta data and user information into the so called data layer. Google’s official help pages includes more details about the data layer. PHP 7.4 is required to use this plugin. GTM container code placement The original GTM container code is divided into two parts: The first part is a javascript code snippet that is added to the section of every page of the website. This part is critical to enable all features of GTM, and this plugin helps to place this part correctly on your site. The second part is an iframe snippet that acts as a failsafe/fallback should users’ JavaScript be disabled. Google recommends – for best performance – to place this code snippet directly after the opening tag on each page. Albeit not ideal, it will work when placed lower in the code. This plugin provides a code placement option for the second code snippet. If your WordPress theme is compatible with the additions of WordPress 5.2 then this plugin will place this second code to the right place. Users of the Genisis theme, GeneratePress theme, Elementor, Oxygen Builder and Beaver Builder Theme will also have this placed correctly. To utilize this, set the compatibility mode in plugin options to off. All other users can place this second code snippet using a custom PHP code (“Manually coded” option) or select the so called “Footer” option to add the code lower in the code (it is not the recommended way but will work) Basic data included post/page titles post/page dates post/page category names post/page tag names post/page author ID and name post/page ID post types post format post count on the current page + in the current category/tag/taxonomy custom terms associated with any post type logged in status logged in user role logged in user ID (to track cross device behaviour in Google Analytics) logged in user email address (both unhashed and SHA256 hased values to be used with tracking) logger in user creation date site search data site name and id (for WordPress multisite instances) IP address of the visitor (please use the explicit consent of the visitor to utilize this) Browser / OS / Device data browser data (name, version, engine) OS data (name, version) device data (type, manufacturer, model) Data is provided using the WhichBrowser library: http://whichbrowser.net/ Weather data (beta) Push data about users’ current weather conditions into the dataLayer. This can be used to generate weather-related audience/remarketing lists on ad platforms and allows for user segmentation in your web analytics solutions: weather category (clouds, rain, snow, etc.) weather description: more detailed data temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit air pressure wind speed and degrees Weather data is queried from Open Weather Map. Depending on your websites traffic, additional fees may apply: http://openweathermap.org/price An (free) API key from OpenWeatherMap is required for this feature to work. ipstack.com is used to determine the site visitor’s location. A (free) API key from IPStack.com is required for this feature to work: https://ipstack.com/product Media player events (experimental) Track users’ interaction with any embedded media: YouTube Vimeo Soundcloud DataLayer events can be chosen to fire upon media player load, media is being played, paused/stopped and optionally when the user reaches 10, 20, 30, …, 90, 100% of the media duration. Tracking is supported for embedded media using the built-in oEmbed feature of WordPress as well as most other media plugins and copy/pasted codes. Players injected into the website after page load are not currently supported. Scroll tracking Fire tags based on how the visitor scrolls from the top to the bottom of a page. An example would be to separate “readers” (who spend a specified amount of time on a page) from “scrollers” (who only scroll through within seconds). You can use these events to fire Analytics tags and/or remarketing/conversion tags (for micro conversions). Scroll tracking is based on the solution originally created by Nick Mihailovski Thomas Baekdal Avinash Kaushik Joost de Valk Eivind Savio Justin Cutroni Original script: http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/21/advanced-content-tracking-with-google-analytics-part-1/ Blacklist & Whitelist Tag Manager tags, triggers and variables To increase website security, you have the option to white- and blacklist tags/triggers/variables. You can prevent specific tags from firing or the use of certain variable types regardless of your GTM setup. If the Google account associated with your GTM account is being hacked, an attacker could easily execute malware on your website without accessing its code on your hosting server. By blacklisting custom HTML tags and/or custom JavaScript variables you can secure the Tag Manager container. Integration Google Tag Manager for WordPress integrates with several popular plugins. More integration to come! Contact Form 7: fire an event when a Contact Form 7 form was submitted with any result (mail sent, mail failed, spam detected, invalid input) WooCommerce: Implementation of GA4 E-commerce Does not support promotions since WooCommerce does not have such a feature (yet) Does not support refunds Compatibility with High Performance Order Storage (HPOS) AMP: load your AMP container on the AMP version of your pages Cookiebot: use automatic cookie blocking mode if needed Google Consent Mode v2: fire the “default” command with specific consent flags to integrat with non-certified Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and plugins. Server side containers If you are using a server side container you can enter your custom domain name and custom path to load gtm.js from your there. Exclude specific user roles from being tracked You can set which user roles needs to be excluded from tracking when a user with that role visits the frontend. This will completely disable the container code for that user.

Koko Analytics gives you WordPress analytics inside your dashboard without sending visitor data to an external service. See your pageviews, visitors, top pages, and referrers while keeping analytics data on your own server. It is built for privacy from the start. Koko Analytics can be used without cookies and does not process or store personal data. That makes it suitable for GDPR, CCPA, and PECR-friendly website statistics. It is also built for speed. Koko Analytics adds less than 1 KB to your HTML, works with cached pages, and bypasses WordPress for its optimized collection endpoint. Why choose Koko Analytics? Privacy-friendly analytics Koko Analytics is privacy-friendly analytics for WordPress. No personal data is processed or stored, all measurements are anonymous, and nothing is shared with a third-party analytics platform. Lightweight website statistics Koko Analytics is lightweight analytics. It adds less than 1 kilobyte of data to your HTML and is fully compatible with pages served from any kind of cache. WordPress is bypassed entirely for its collection endpoint, making the impact on your site’s performance as close to zero as possible. A simple analytics dashboard Koko Analytics is simple analytics. There are no complicated reports to dig through. One dashboard page shows your important website statistics. Open source analytics Koko Analytics is open source analytics released under the GPL license, just like WordPress itself. It is built in the open, so anyone can verify how it works. No company can lock you in or take your analytics data away. Features WordPress analytics dashboard – View your website statistics directly inside WordPress admin. Top posts and pages – See which content gets the most visits. Referrer statistics – Find out which websites send traffic to your site. Path-based tracking – Track statistics for any URL, including archives and search pages. Returning visitor detection – Reliably detect returning visitors without cookies. Exclusion rules – Exclude visits from selected WordPress user roles or IP addresses. Historical data imports – Import statistics from Jetpack Stats, Plausible, or Burst Statistics. Automatic data cleanup – Remove historical data older than a chosen number of months or years. Popular posts output – Show your most visited posts or pages with a widget, Gutenberg block, or shortcode. Pageview counter – Show the total number of pageviews for a page with a shortcode or Gutenberg block. Koko Analytics Pro Koko Analytics Pro adds more reporting options for sites that need deeper analytics. Country statistics – See which countries your visitors come from. Technology reports – View browser, operating system, and device statistics. Custom event tracking – Track outbound link clicks, contact form submissions, add-to-cart actions, and more. Email reports – Receive periodic analytics reports in your inbox. Traffic spike alerts – Get notified by email when traffic changes quickly. View the Koko Analytics live demo or see Koko Analytics Pro pricing.