If you are at all interested in having a popular or successful blog you’ll need statistics; and even if you aren’t its great to know who your users are and what they enjoy and dislike. Below is a review of various WordPress statistics plugins, with their pros and cons.

Before you start, some things you should know:

1. Ratings are not based on features alone. They take into account what you might use the plugin for, and how well it achieves that task!
2. I have left some out, let me know if I should include them. Specifically I chose to leave Reinvigorate out as its in an endless beta, and lately my stats don’t even update.
3. I haven’t included every single little feature of every app; if I’ve missed an important one let me know.

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WordPress.com Stats

The official WordPress.com Stats plugin requires only a WordPress.com key (free) and it will begin recording for you. This is a great plugin for a quick view of the most important metrics on your site – and thats how it will stay – slim.

Automattic’s goal with this is to give you easy to understand, simple statistics.

Features

• Search referrals
• Regular referrals
• Top posts & pages
• Click tracking

Screenshots

 

Rating

Final Word

WordPress.com’s stats are a simple and easy to use plugin; however they are a bit minimal for my liking when they compete for the same task (in my opinion) as ShortStat.

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WP-ShortStat

Based on Shaun Inman’s ShortStat, the original shortstat stopped working sometime after WordPress 2.0. The modified ShortStat lives on though, and gives a great amount of short, to the point information. In my opinion, this is a must have for every site because it will keep the stats you need for a long period of time, without becoming bloated.

Features

• Search referrals
• Regular referrals
• Top lists
• Hits list
• Browsers, platforms etc
• Countries and languages
• Seperate RSS hit counting

Screenshots

Rating

Final Word

ShortStat is just great. Its meant to supply summarized statistics for a long period of time and it does just that. A quick glimpse at the page allows you to immediately see the day or weeks stats without delving, and it comes packed with other useful stats.

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Wassup

Wassup is pretty simple, but it has one great feature: SPY. SPY allows you to view your users live, where they are going as they go there. This is great if you are watching after a digg, or if you like to keep up to date.

Features

• Top 10 lists
• Browsers
• Usage graph
• Online User Watch

Screenshots

Rating

Final Word

Wassup is a mediocre stats plugin, if you try you can get whatever information you need (in a simple form) out of it; but then comes the SPY feature. If you are getting hammered, or hope to be, this is the best. Live tracking of users browsing on your site, and there incoming referrals etc is a great feature.

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FireStats

FireStats is a nice app for keeping track of your popular items. It tracks Post Views, Search Strings, Browsers, Operating Systems etc. You can vary the time content is shown over using the toolkit icon (which can be missed) next to headings; this is a great feature if you’re comparing long term trends to current ones.

Features

• Top lists
• Variable timeline
• Hits list
• Browsers, platforms etc
• Countries and languages

Screenshots

Rating

Final Word

FireStats is a useful plugin if you are running a smaller site. For larger load sites I prefer ShortStat as you will never use the hit log in this, and the counting etc is not as nicely done. On the other hand, if you have a smaller site and are interested in specifics it can be very useful.

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StatCounter

StatCounter.com has come to the party releasing a plugin purely for WordPress to integrate with their site. Unfortunately though, if you have a high load site you’ll end up paying (although not much). If you don’t, you’ll also be seeing ads on their site. The plus side is that the load of statistics isn’t on your server; and its very thorough.

Features

• Invisible Counter Option
• Configurable Counter
• Configurable Summary Stats
• Magnify User
• Drill Down
• Popular Pages
• Entry Pages
• Exit Pages
• Came From
• Keyword Analysis
• Recent Keyword Activity
• Search Engine Wars
• Visitor Paths
• Visit Length
• Returning Visits
• Recent Pageload Activity
• Recent Visitor Activity
• Country/State/City Stats
• Recent Visitor Google Map
• ISP Stats
• Browser Stats
• O.S. Stats
• Resolution Stats
• JavaScript Stats
• Email Reports
• Multiple Site Management
• User Access Management
• Public Stats
• Blocking Cookie

Screenshots

Rating

Final Word

Statcounter is a thorough service, providing a lot of information. Unfortuntely its not completely free, and is spattled in advertising etc. Compared to other products similar to this (such as Google Analytics) its not as good.

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Google Analytics

Google Analytics for WordPress is a plugin which essentially just adds the Google Analytics code onto your website, but with click tracking and more. Google Analytics is an extremely powerful statistics tool for someone wanting long term, extended statistics. Geekpedia has a thorough review.

Features

• Fast Implementation
• Keyword and Campaign Comparison
• Custom Dashboards
• AdWords Integration
• Trend and Date Slider
• Ecommerce Tracking
• Funnel Visualization
• Site Overlay
• Email reports
• GeoTargeting
• and heaps more – a full statistics package.

Screenshots

Rating

Final Word

Google Analytics is more powerful than StatCounter, and completely free. The best feature is the different views it includes; such as an Executive view and a Web Designer view.  A powerful, freeb tool; and brilliantly implemented with the WordPress plugin.

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