Independent Analytics – WordPress Analytics Plugin vs Search Meter

Google Analytics is complicated! You shouldn’t have to spend hours on tracking scripts, variables, dimensions, and other complexities just to answer basic questions about your visitors. That’s why we built Independent Analytics. Independent Analytics gives you simple, common-sense stats you can use to grow your website. It automatically tracks your visitors and adds easy-to-read reports right inside your WordPress admin dashboard. As a Google Analytics alternative, Independent Analytics also offers superior privacy for yourself and your visitors. It does not use cookies, store personal data, or communicate with external servers. All of your data is created and stored in your WP database. This is a free plugin and doesn’t require you to create an account on another site. Loved by the WP Community ❤️ Independent Analytics has received praise and renown from WP Tuts, Web Squadron, WP Weekly, WP Builds, and many more publications. Get Started in 60 Seconds Visit your Plugins > Add New menu Search for “Independent Analytics” Install and enjoy 🙂 Independent Analytics starts tracking visitors immediately. No JavaScript. No code snippets. No account to create. Just install and activate, and clear your cache once if you’re using a caching plugin. Your data starts showing up right away, so you can refresh the page and check how it’s going. Who’s it for? Bloggers: Find out which posts are getting traction without wading through a dashboard built for enterprise marketing teams. Use Independent Analytics for simple blog statistics and blog stats that show you what’s actually being read. Builders & agencies: Give your clients analytics that they can easily understand and access from within the WP dashboard. No more fielding questions about complex GA4 reports or Google Tag Manager configurations. eCommerce stores: Check which products get the most views and what visitors are searching for before buying. Uncover your most valuable traffic sources to streamline your marketing, and get more advanced eCommerce store analytics with the Pro version. News sites: You need same-day site stats and a fast way to see what’s resonating now. The analytics update in real-time and you can quickly check your post views in the Posts menu while you work. You might also enjoy the real-time dashboard included in the Pro version. Startups: Get straight to the most valuable data without digging through endless menus. Find out where your early adopters are coming from and what messaging resonates with them. Nonprofits: You want to know where your donors come from and which campaigns get attention, without using cookies that violate donor trust. Easily share analytics access with other team members to get everyone on board with using data to advance your mission. Fully Private for You and Your Visitors Without privacy friendly analytics, you could be at risk of violating regional privacy laws, such as the GDPR (DSGVO) or CCPA. Independent Analytics Analytics is a privacy first analytics solution designed from the ground up for legal compliance. No communication with external servers No cookies No personal data Skip the complexity of consent banners and data processing agreements by using self-hosted, cookieless analytics. What You Can Track Independent Analytics includes a wealth of metrics for understanding your visitors: Visitor tracking – track visitors across your site and see your unique visitor count, page views, and sessions. Engagement tracking – see how long people spend on your site, how often they “bounce,” and how many pages they view on average. Referral tracking – see your top referrers and traffic sources. Know which sites, search engines, AI platforms, and social networks send you traffic. Geographic tracking – see the countries and cities of your visitors. Device tracking – discover the device types people are using to access your site, including a mobile vs. desktop comparison. Campaign tracking – use UTM tracking to measure the performance of your marketing campaigns. Create UTM links and track results in the Campaigns report (Pro). Click tracking & link tracking – track clicks on any link or button. Includes outbound link tracking and download tracking for file download tracking (Pro). Form tracking & form analytics – automatically track form submissions across 20+ form plugins (Pro). Sales tracking & revenue tracking – connect your store for full eCommerce tracking with WooCommerce analytics and WooCommerce tracking. Also supports FluentCart, Easy Digital Downloads, SureCart, and PaidMembershipsPro (Pro). Metrics at a Glance Your analytics dashboard displays all the web analytics you need in one place: Page view and unique visitor counter Bounce rate and views per session Session duration and page view duration Popular posts and popular pages (top pages sorted by any metric) Top referrers and traffic sources Landing pages, entry pages, and exit pages Country statistics and city statistics with an interactive world map Device statistics, browser statistics, and operating system breakdowns Visitors growth and views growth Every metric updates in real-time so you always have fresh website traffic data. Filter, sort, and segment by date range, post type, author, and many other factors. Explore the Simple, Yet Powerful Features Our WordPress statistics plugin is more robust than a simple hit counter and includes all of the following features: Pages report – discover your most visited pages. Referrers report – find the sites sending you traffic. Geographic report – see which countries and cities your visitors are from. Devices report – get a breakdown of traffic by device type, browser, and operating system. CSV exporting – export any report to CSV for further analysis in tools like Excel or Looker Studio. PDF exporting – export any report as a beautiful PDF report to share with colleagues. Saved reports – create and save custom reports to the sidebar. Share access with authors – share access with any user role in a few clicks and optionally limit the stats to only content published by the author. White-label the dashboard – white-label the analytics for non-admins to remove any branding and external links. View counts in the Posts menu – check how many views your recent posts have while browsing the Posts menu. Dashboard widget – get a quick look at your stats when you login. Admin toolbar stats – see how many views each page has while viewing or editing it. Public view counter – show off how many views each post on your site has gotten. Ignore user roles – easily ignore activity from admins while recording traffic from .Subscribers and Customers. Ignore IP addresses – add any IP address to your ignore list in just two clicks. Automatically delete old data – delete data older than X months/years to limit the total data storage. Filtering system – segment your data with the powerful filters. Essential metrics – find your views, visitors, sessions, bounce rate, session duration, and views per session metrics in the Quick Stats, chart, and data table. Visitors Growth – find your fastest-growing pages and referrers. Author stats – sort and filter your pages by author. Post type stats – segment by post type to view stats for your posts, search results, custom post types, 404 pages, and more. Landing page stats – Use the Entrances metric to find your top landing pages. Developer API – the rudimentary developer API lets you get stats from any page on your site. RTL support – Independent Analytics works just as well for right-to-left languages. Mobile-friendly – the Analytics dashboard is fully compatible with mobile devices. Campaigns report (Pro) – create and track UTM campaign links. Real-time analytics (Pro) – see live visitors on your site right now. Click tracking (Pro) – track clicks on any link without touching code. eCommerce analytics (Pro) – integration with WooCommerce, FluentCart, EDD, SureCart, and PaidMembershipsPro. lets you find your most profitable campaigns, landing pages, and referrers. User journeys (Pro) – explore every recorded session including a timeline for each one, so you can understand exactly how visitors use your website. Form tracking (Pro) – automatically track form submissions and discover where your leads are coming from. Integration with 20+ top form plugins, such as WPForms, Contact Form 7, Fluent Forms, Gravity Forms, Mailchimp for WordPress, Ninja Forms, Formidable Forms, and more. Overview report (Pro) – create the perfect analytics dashboard for your website with the customizable Overview report. Solo reports (Pro) – view dedicated reports for individual pages and referrers. HTML email reports (Pro) – schedule a beautiful daily, weekly, or monthly email report for yourself and your clients. Explore every feature with screenshots here → Built for Speed and Accuracy Independent Analytics is a lightweight analytics plugin that won’t slow your site down. It uses a single, optimized database query to record each visit. No external scripts. No third-party requests. Without the need for a consent banner, your analytics are much more accurate. Only 31% of visitors accept cookie banners. Unlike sampling-based tools, every single visit is recorded and no additional data is simulated. What you see in the dashboard is what actually happened on your site. A Better Alternative If you’re tired of bloated or invasive analytics tools, Independent Analytics is a refreshing change. People use it as a: Google Analytics alternative – no account needed and no data sent to Google. All your website analytics stay on your server. Matomo alternative – lighter weight, easier to use, and fully self-hosted without needing to maintain a separate application. Jetpack Stats alternative – faster, more feature-rich, and doesn’t require a WordPress.com connection. MonsterInsights alternative – view your web analytics natively in WordPress without connecting to Google Analytics. Plausible alternative – similar privacy-first approach but fully free and self-hosted with no monthly fee. Fathom alternative – similar simple analytics philosophy, but free and hosted entirely on your own server. Clicky alternative – real-time analytics without sending your visitor data to an external service. WordPress Stats You Can Count On Independent Analytics is the WordPress stats plugin trusted by over 100,000 websites. Whether you need simple site stats for a personal blog or full website statistics for a growing business, it gives you everything in one plugin. Use it as your complete web analytics solution: track website traffic, monitor website traffic patterns over time, and understand where your visitors come from and what they do. It’s the WordPress analytics plugin the web has been missing. Independent Analytics Pro Get more valuable insights with the Independent Analytics Pro plugin, which includes UTM campaign tracking, real-time analytics, click event tracking, eCommerce sales tracking (WooCommerce, FluentCart, EDD, SureCart), user journeys, form conversion tracking, HTML email reports, and a customizable Overview report. Click here to get Independent Analytics Pro → Who Made This? Independent Analytics is designed and developed by Ben Sibley and Andrew Mead in the beautiful city of Philadelphia. Check out our interview on the WP Builds podcast if you’d like to hear our story.

If you have a Search box on your site, Search Meter automatically records what people are searching for — and whether they are finding what they are looking for. Search Meter’s admin interface shows you what people have been searching for in the last couple of days, and in the last week or month. It also shows you which searches have been unsuccessful. If people search your site and get no results, they’ll probably go elsewhere. With Search Meter, you’ll be able to find out what people are searching for, and give them what they want by creating new posts on those topics. You can also show your readers what the most popular searches are. Customize your theme and add the Popular Searches block, which displays a configurable list of recent popular successful search terms on your site, with each term hyperlinked to the actual search results. You can also add a Recent Searches block, which simply displays the most recent searches. Both blocks are also available as widgets for older WordPress installations. And if you want to edit your theme, both of these functions are also available as template tags. Search Meter installs easily and requires no configuration. Just install it, activate it, and it starts tracking your visitors’ searches. View Statistics To see your search statistics, Log in to WordPress Admin. On your dashboard you will see a Search Meter widget listing search statistics from the last seven days. For more details, go to the Dashboard menu on the left and click Search Meter. You’ll see the most popular searches in the last day, week and month. Click “Last 100 Searches” or “Last 500 Searches” to see lists of all recent searches. You can download the statistics as a file that you can open in Excel or a similar program. Manage Statistics There are a few options available if you go to the Settings section and click Search Meter. Use the radio buttons to determine who will be allowed to see the full search statistics. You can also type in a list of filter words; any search terms containing these words will not show up in the Recent Searches and Popular Searches blocks. Advanced users: You can check the “Ignore” box to tell Search Meter to ignore searches made by logged-in administrators, so you can test things without cluttering your search statistics. You can also check the “Keep detailed information” checkbox to make Search Meter save technical information about every search (the information is taken from the HTTP headers). Use the Reset Statistics button to clear all past search statistics; Search Meter will immediately start gathering fresh statistics.