Analytics Insights is a free, featured plugin that brings Google Analytics stats into your WordPress site.
This plugin uses a set of comprehensible reports to make your Google Analytics data easier to understand. A powerful widget with custom reports provides key analytics insights in your Administration Dashboard, while in-depth Page reports / Post reports allow further segmentation of your analytics data, providing performance details about your posts and pages.
The tracking component of this plugin will automatically install Google Analytics on your website by inserting the required tracking code in all your web pages.
If you are new to Google Analytics and you don’t have an account yet, you should create one before proceeding further. To create your first Account, Property and View follow the how to add Google Analytics 4 to WordPress tutorial.
General Settings in Analytics Insights
In order to allow this plugin to retrieve analytics data from your Google Analytics account, you need to go through a simple authorization process.
To authorize the plugin go to Analytics Insights -> General Settings and press the button called Authorize Plugin.
When needed, you can use your own Google Analytics API Project to authorize the plugin. This is suitable for web developers, for websites generating a huge amount of API requests (huge websites/huge networks), or for education purposes. To use your own API Project, select enable developer mode in Analytics Insights -> General Settings. Using your own Google Analytics API Project has nothing to do with the amount of Properties / Views you have defined in your Google Analytics account. Webmasters managing multiple websites from a single Google Analytics account should use the Hide Now option. You’ll find more details about that option below.
After completing the authorization process, the page reloads and a set of new options will be available. At this point, you can select the preferred properties from a Properties list. If you have multiple Properties defined in your Google Analytics account, the plugin will retrieve all of them and you’ll be able to select the default ones.
After selecting the default Property you can opt to hide all other Properties using the Lock Selection button. This feature is useful when you are authorizing the plugin using a Google Analytics account with multiple Properties defined and you don’t want other Admins to be able to see them. To unhide them you’ll have to clear the authorization and authorize again.
Using the Theme Color option, you can pick a favorite color for Analytics Insights. This color and some variations will be used to render the aria chart, the geo map chart and the pie chart. This option will also affect the color of your frontend widget.
Okay, you’ve completed the authorization process and selected a default color for your theme, now it’s time to make some extra settings like Backend, Frontend and Tracking Code. To access the plugin’s options, select Analytics Insights from your main menu.
Backend Components and Settings
You may want to share your analytics data and your success with a team, your employees or your friends. The Show stats to option handles this kind of need, allowing you to share your reports with other administrators, contributors, editors or authors. If you choose to share your data with your editors, you’ll have to select Editor role for Show stats to option. Similar access levels and roles can also be set for Frontend features.
If you have multiple Properties in the same Google Account, but you want to share reports about a single Property, you will need to keep the enable Switch Property functionality option switched off. If you enable this option, authorized users will be able to switch between Properties using the domain list selector from their Analytics Insights widget.
Analytics Insights for WP gives you full control over its features. For example, if you plan to use it only as a tracking plugin, you can switch off the enable reports on Posts List and Pages List and enable the main Dashboard Widget features.
The Real-Time settings will allow you to display real-time stats in your Administration Dashboard. You can limit the number of pages displayed on Real-Time Dashboard by setting a suitable value for the option called: maximum number of pages to display on the real-time tab.
If you have a local website or business you can target the Geo Map to a region and display visitors by city instead of visitors by country.
You can find more about these features by reading the real-time reports and geographic locations tutorial.
Frontend Components and Settings
To enable the frontend reports go to Analytics Insights -> Frontend Settings and switch on the enable web page reports on frontend option. When enabled, you can check the analytics reports for any web page from your site using the Analytics link. The Analytics link is located in the Toolbar, at the top of your screen. Note that these analytics reports are only available for the user roles selected in the Show stats to option, which can be found under Analytics Insights -> Frontend Settings.
A sidebar widget is also available, you can enable it from Appearance -> Widgets. This is a public widget that will display a set of analytics reports to all users, as a standard widget does. You can choose between Last 7 Days, Last 14 Days and Last 30 Days reports and you can also choose to anonymize the stats. By anonymizing data, you can display your website’s trends while keeping the real analytics data private.
Tracking Code
Disabled (not recommended) means you are disabling the tracking component. The Google Analytics tracking code will NOT be automatically generated and inserted in your pages.
Google Analytics 4 is the new tracking code snippet for GA4 properties. When this option is selected under Tracking Type the plugin will automatically generate the gtag.js tracking code, which will be inserted in all your website’s pages.
Don’t worry about your Measurement ID, once you’ve selected the default domain in Analytics Insights -> General Settings, the corresponding G-YYYYYY ID is automatically retrieved from your Google Analytics account and the tracking code is automatically generated and inserted in all your pages!
For more details regarding the tracking functionality and features read the Tracking with Analytics Insights article.
FAQ, Resources & Final Notes
To install the plugin use the built-in WordPress plugin installer. For manual installs, here is a copy of the latest stable version. For beta versions and pull requests check out our GitHub repository.
For frequently asked questions (FAQ), tutorials, release notes, and other helpful resources see AIWP documentation index.
To find more details on how this extension works and how your data is used, read Data Usage Policy for my Extensions.