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Analytics are crucial for any website owner looking to succeed.
When it comes to analytics, Google Analytics is by far the most popular solution on the web. This is because it’s free, and for years, it’s been one of the few analytics solutions available.
However, just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for bloggers or small businesses.
The truth is that Google Analytics is overly complex for most site owners.
Not to mention, it isn’t GDPR compliant making it illegal to use in some countries.
The good news is that if you’re looking to get analytics on your WordPress site without using Google, there are alternatives.
In fact, a brand new (and free) alternative to Google Analytics was just released for all users of WordPress.
WordPress Analytics without Google
The best solution to add analytics to WordPress without using Google is the new Independent Analytics plugin.
Independent Analytics adds a full analytics dashboard to your WordPress admin, where you can find your site’s views, visitors, traffic sources, and visitor geolocations.
Additionally, it’s 100% GDPR compatible, and you don’t need to worry about adding or editing a tracking code because the plugin handles that automatically for you.
Like Google Analytics, it’s free, but since the data tracking and storage are done completely on your website, you have total privacy and control of your data.
Now let’s talk about how to add this plugin to your website.
Install Independent Analytics
To install Independent Analytics, you can download it from their site, or install it via your WP admin menu.
Visit the Plugins > Add New menu, search for it by name, and click the Install Now button.
After a moment, you’ll see the button change to Activate, which you can click to complete the installation process.
This will take a few seconds, and then your analytics will be ready!
You can reach the analytics dashboard via the new Analytics menu item added to the WordPress admin sidebar.
The analytics dashboard includes quick stats, a chart, and a filterable and sortable data table listing all your visited pages. There are similar reports for your traffic sources and visitor geolocations too.
When you first visit the dashboard, you won’t have any data recorded yet, but since Independent Analytics displays today’s data, it won’t be long before you see views and visitors showing up.
Other Google Analytics alternatives
While we think Independent Analytics is awesome, it’s not the only Google Analytics alternative for WordPress.
As a WordPress user, you’re in a good position to benefit from plugins that record visit data without requiring an external server.
WP Statistics also records visits without using any external servers. It has a lot of reports and includes data like your top pages, top referrers, and geolocation data.
If you’re looking for something really simple, Statify can give you a quick look at your recent views via a dashboard widget.
And if you’re okay with using a third-party app, Plausible is a popular alternative to Google Analytics. It comes with a monthly subscription, but is privacy-friendly and has a nice user interface.
Starting tracking visitors without Google
As you can see, there are lots of ways to track visitors without using Google Analytics.
Independent Analytics gives you a simple and robust analytics dashboard. It stands out as the best option since it was designed exclusively for WordPress and integrates with it in ways that other plugins and analytics programs don’t.
Regardless of which solution you choose, I hope this guide on how to get WordPress analytics without Google Analytics helped you out.
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