What’s The Best Stats Plugin For WordPress?
Statistics play an important role in the success of a blog or website and finding the right one for WordPress is a common question!
I talk a lot about how to connect your site to various stats services in the All-In-One Webmaster training video.
Reader Kiki asks…
“I wanted to ask your thoughts on the best stat plugin for WordPress. There are so many, I do not know what to choose. Thank you!“
My answer to you and Kiki …
This is a question that comes up regularly because all business owners and most bloggers are keenly aware of the importance of tracking their business metrics.
When it comes to WordPress, First, I honestly don’t recommend using a plugin to display stats. Instead, I recommend an off-site service. Let me explain…
The site should have a Google Analytics account set up and simply logging into that will give you more stats than you could possibly want. If you don’t want to insert its code into your theme to verify it there is the Google Analyticator plugin by Yoast that makes that easier (although like all stats plugins because it pulls in data will affect your site speed). I use All in one Webmaster to connect my site to all the analytics sites, as it simply adds the code and does not slow down a site. I check my stats in my Google Analytics account.
In addition to Google Analytics, many site owners also like to connect their site to the Clicky analytics service which is free for one account. It produces similar data to Google Analytics but has a layout that some prefer.
I connect my sites to a number of off-site stats services including Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Facebook Insights, Alexa and more using All-in-One Webmaster. (Actually I manually add the code to this site, but I use that on most of my other sites.) This plugin handles the “verification” part of connecting to these sites and because it does not pull data in it has minimal impact on site speed.
If that is not acceptable, then the former WP-Stats is now a part of WP.com’s “JetPack”. Rather than use JetPack though I suggest getting “Jetpack Lite” which contains only the stats module and the shortener module. WP-Stats is reasonably decent and some of my clients like it. Its one of the best available for good integration into WordPress. However, like all stats apps that pull data in it will have a negative impact on site speed.
Hopefully one of these two solutions will work well for you!
