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Wondering where your visitors come from?
If you can see the sites sending you traffic, you’ll get a better understanding of which marketing tactics work best and discover new communities to engage with.
And it’s easy to figure this out with the plugins included here.
These free traffic tracking plugins can tell you:
- Which websites are sending you the most traffic
- How many visitors come from search engines
- How much social media traffic you get
- And much more
Keep reading to pick the best new plugin for your site.
Traffic source tracking plugins
The collection below features a diverse set of plugins that all include some kind of referrer tracking ability. Some are focused on more general web analytics, while others are built for conversion tracking.
Due to the varied nature of these plugins, you may want to install 2-3 on your site to get a more complete picture.
Here are the top picks for the best traffic source analysis WP plugins.
1. Independent Analytics
Plugin Description
Independent Analytics is a free alternative to Google Analytics (GA) that will tell you how many people have visited your site and where they came from. Unlike GA, it doesn’t use cookies and is GDPR-compliant.
There’s a full Referrers menu in the dashboard where you can find a list of every site that’s referred a visitor to your site.
You can sort them by any column and filter them to see only traffic from search engines or social media sites. There’s also a “Visitors Growth” column you can enable to monitor how much your traffic from each site has grown over time.
As a full analytics platform, Independent Analytics also includes a list of your top pages and geographic locations of your visitors. If you’re looking for a faster, simpler, and more privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics, it will be a great addition to your site.
2. Analytify
Plugin Description
If you want to use Google Analytics but are unsure how to integrate it with WordPress, check out Analytify. It’s a simple and free plugin for adding GA to your site, and it adds reports inside your WP admin dashboard.
Google Analytics is a robust tool with a massive amount of data, allowing you to find the sites that sent you visitors and much more. The only downside is that it’s an advanced tool and takes a long time to learn. Analytify helps simplify things by adding custom dashboards to the WP admin. These reports aren’t as flexible as the ones inside the GA dashboard, but most users find them much easier to use.
If you want all the power of Google Analytics without all the complexity, consider adding Analytify to track your traffic sources and visits.
3. CP Referrer & Conversion Tracking
Plugin Description
CP Referrer & Conversion Tracking is a unique and powerful plugin for understanding your traffic sources. It works differently than most other analytics plugins.
Instead of just reporting how much traffic you received from each source, this plugin informs you on which source sent you a lead. For instance, you can see a list of your conversions, like a WooCommerce sale or a Gravity Forms submission, and the traffic source is connected to that conversion. This makes it possible to see how many leads you get from Facebook VS Google, for instance.
Since this plugin doesn’t have all the traditional web analytics you might want, it’s a great tool to run alongside a full analytics suite like Independent Analytics.
4. Koko Analytics
Plugin Description
Koko Analytics is another privacy-friendly analytics plugin that runs without Google Analytics. It’s easy to install and requires next-to-zero configuration.
Once Koko is up and running on your site, you’ll see pageviews and visitor stats show up immediately. Unlike GA, you don’t have to wait until midnight for the analytics to process and show up from the day before.
Koko is pretty simple, but it does include all your traffic sources. It ranks them by those that sent the most visitors, and the top ten are in a list right in the primary dashboard. You can also see a full list of every site that sent you at least one visitor.
Koko Analytics will be a good choice if you want a simple way to record your pageviews and traffic sources.
5. Visitor Traffic Real Time Statistics
Plugin Description
The Visitor Traffic Real Time Statistics plugin differs from the others listed here. It is its own analytics solution and has an emphasis on live statistics and real-time analytics.
With this plugin, you can see how many people are on your site right now, in addition to charts and aggregated stats showing daily visitors. It also has a referrers report, which lists every site that sent you a visitor.
One feature that makes this plugin stand out is the search term report. It lists keywords your visitors searched in Google to reach your site. While this data is limited, it can help you better understand how people are finding you through search engines.
Overall, it’s a unique analytics plugin and will give you the traffic source data you’re looking for.
Which plugin is best for evaluating your traffic sources?
What did you think? Excited to try a few of these on your site?
Independent Analytics is the top recommendation for finding sites sending you visitors. It’s more robust than other options here and has some unique data, like the traffic growth from each referrer.
If you’d prefer to use Google Analytics, the Analytify plugin can help you get started. This plugin includes a full page listing your traffic sources and is quite easy to navigate.
And here’s one last shout-out for the CP Referrer & Conversion Tracking plugin, which can show you the traffic source for each of your conversions and works well in conjunction with one of the other plugins listed here.
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