Site Kit by Google – Analytics, Search Console, AdSense, Speed vs Matomo Analytics – Powerful, Privacy-First Insights for WordPress

Site Kit is the official WordPress plugin from Google for insights about how people find and use your site. Site Kit is the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web. It provides authoritative, up-to-date insights from multiple Google products directly on the WordPress dashboard for easy access, all for free. Bringing the best of Google tools to WordPress Site Kit includes powerful features that make using these Google products seamless and flexible: Easy-to-understand stats directly on your WordPress dashboard Official stats from multiple Google tools, all in one dashboard Quick setup for multiple Google tools without having to edit the source code of your site Metrics for your entire site and for individual posts Easy-to-manage, granular permissions across WordPress and different Google products Supported Google tools Site Kit shows key metrics and insights from different Google products: Search Console: Understand how Google Search discovers and displays your pages in Google Search. Track how many people saw your site in Search results, and what query they used to search for your site. Analytics: Explore how users navigate your site and track goals you’ve set up for your users to complete. AdSense: Keep track of how much your site is earning you. PageSpeed Insights: See how your pages perform compared to other real-world sites. Improve performance with actionable tips from PageSpeed Insights. Tag Manager: Use Site Kit to easily set up Tag Manager- no code editing required. Then, manage your tags in Tag Manager. Sign in with Google: Allows visitors to sign up and log in to your site with their existing Google account. Reader Revenue Manager: Helps you grow, retain, and engage your site visitors via subscription, contribution, newsletters, surveys, and custom prompts. Ads: Get customers and sell more with targeted traffic from Google Ads.

Version 5.11.1 and above include an important security related fix, it is highly recommended to update to this version. Already a Matomo On-Premise or Matomo Cloud user? You need to use the Connect Matomo plugin instead of this plugin. For all you WordPress website owners wanting an easier way to get customer insights to grow your business, you can now get the solution the professionals use, for free! Matomo Analytics is the #1 used Google Analytics alternative that offers a powerful range of features, security and protects the privacy of your users. This enables you to learn how to improve your website, make the right decisions for your business and stand out in the crowd in a safe and trustworthy way. Matomo’s mission is to give control and data ownership back to the user. By hosting web analytics on your own servers there’s no third-parties taking ownership, no on-selling of data and no-one looking in. This means when you install Matomo in a matter of a few clicks, you’re in full control. It’s also easier for you to get insights from Matomo Analytics with it’s time-saving interface design and out-of-the-box features, which require less manual configuration than Google Analytics. Matomo is free, secure and open – your ethical user insights platform. How Matomo Analytics for WordPress solves problems: 100% data ownership, no one else can see your data All data is stored in your WordPress and not sent to any third party or different country Super easy to install. No coding or technical knowledge needed #nocode Free to use forever Designed to save you time as an out-of-box solution (including many Ecommerce stores) Protects the privacy of your users GDPR Manager No data sampling Opportunities to extend with an ever-growing marketplace Supports over 50 languages Comes equipped with Matomo Tag Manager How Matomo focuses on privacy: Superb user privacy protection Heaps of features to anonymize data and IP addresses WP shortcode to embed an opt-out feature into your website Features to export and delete data for GDPR Ability to configure data retention Ultimately, Matomo lets you: learn who your customers are and their needs; understand what content works and how engaged your audience is; identify which marketing channels give you the highest ROI and invest with confidence in channels that convert for your business; and discover blockages and fix pain points for confused visitors to ensure they become satisfied customers. Features include: Ecommerce features (supports WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and MemberPress out of the box) Campaign tracking Visitor profiles Tag Manager Dashboards Segmentation Real time reports Transitions JavaScript error tracking Extensive geolocation reports / maps Many different visualisations Row evolution Report comparisons Export features See the most drastic changes within a given time period Supports WP Rest API And hundreds of other features Easily give your colleagues access to your reports if / when needed Easily exclude certain roles, visitors and pages from being tracked Supports WordPress Multisite. (Note: Tag Manager feature does not work in MultiSite.) Import historical data from Google Analytics or WP Statistics Premium paid features: Heatmaps & Session Recordings Form Analytics Media Analytics Funnels SEO features – Keyword rankings Custom reporting Cohorts Users flow Prerequisites and technical requirements: Running Matomo Analytics on your server can use significant resources. Whenever someone visits your WordPress website, your server will need to serve your WordPress pages to the user, as well as tracking the user journey in Matomo, resulting in an additional request for each page view. The minimum PHP memory limit is 128Mb, but we recommend to use a higher limit (memory_limit = 256M). PHP 7.2 at minimum is required. If you have high traffic website, or manage a lot of websites with WordPress MultiSite, we recommend installing Matomo On-Premise or signup to Matomo Cloud and install the Connect Matomo plugin instead. Needing to know more before you install? Have a read through the most popular FAQs to ensure you’re making the right choice for you. Over 1 million websites in over 190 countries are using Matomo already. Join the revolution too! Install Matomo on your WordPress website completely free and take back full control of your data! Third party resources we use: After activating this plugin, it will download a Geolocation database (DBIP-City.mmdb) from DB IP into your uploads directory. The DB-IP database is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This database is needed to detect the location of your visitors based on their IP. When you enter a URL in the SEO ranking widget, then a request with the entered URL may be sent to Google, Alexa, Bing, and other SEO providers. Credits The entire Matomo team and everyone who contributed André Bräkling who is the Author of the Connect Matomo plugin