GhostStat Analytics for WordPress: your stats on your dashboard

GhostStat Analytics is now in the WordPress plugin directory. It is a WordPress analytics plugin that measures every page without cookies and puts your numbers where you already work: on your WordPress dashboard. Set-up takes about a minute.

Install the WordPress analytics plugin in a minute

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add Plugin, search for “GhostStat Analytics”, then install and activate it.
2. In the GhostStat app, add your site and copy the site key from Install. No account yet? Start free; no card is needed.
3. In WordPress, go to Settings → GhostStat, paste the site key and save.

That’s it: every page is now measured. You can also paste the whole GhostStat snippet; the plugin takes the key out of it. The tracker is loaded with defer, so it never holds up your page, and the tag is the same for every visitor, so it works with page caching.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.3 or newer, tested up to WordPress 7.1.
• PHP 7.4 or newer.
• A GhostStat account. The Free plan is enough to start and needs no card.

The plugin works with any theme and with page-caching plugins, because the tracker tag is the same for every visitor and the statistics are fetched on your server, not in the visitor’s browser.

Your statistics inside WordPress

Add an optional read-only API key (GhostStat app → Site settings → API keys) and you get a statistics page under Dashboard → GhostStat:

• Visitors, visits, pageviews, average visit and bounce rate at a glance.
• Online now: how many people are on your site right now.
• Visitors over time in a clear chart of visitors and pageviews.
• Top pages, top sources and countries: what people read and where they come from.
• Devices and browsers: phone, desktop or tablet; Chrome, Safari, Firefox and more.
• 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or 12 months, switched with one click.

There is also a dashboard widget with the last 7 days (visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, a trend line and your top pages), the first thing you see when you sign in.

Why visitors buy, and why they leave

GhostStat reads behaviour, not cookies, and scores every visit. With your API key, Dashboard → GhostStat also shows:

• Intent, frustration and attention: three scores out of 100, with the change against the period before.
• Who your visitors were: casual browsers, skimmers, researchers, high-intent buyers and more.
• Where they were in their journey: exploring, evaluating, comparing or ready to act.
• Pages where visitors struggle most, each with a link to see why in GhostStat.

Only real visitors, no cookie banner

Choose which signed-in roles are not measured. Administrators are left out by default, so your own clicks while editing don’t fill up your numbers. Signed-in users with a role you exclude are not measured at all, so their visits never reach your reports.

GhostStat sets no cookies, stores nothing in the visitor’s browser and does not fingerprint, so you don’t need a cookie banner for GhostStat. Read more in our post on cookieless analytics without a cookie banner.

Built to stay out of your way

• Fast: one small tracker script, loaded deferred. In wp-admin, reports are cached for five minutes.
• Self-contained: the plugin draws its own charts; no chart library or other code is loaded from elsewhere in wp-admin.
• Safe keys: the API key is read-only, stays on your server and is never sent to a browser.
• Check now: one button tells you whether GhostStat knows your site key and whether your API key works.
• Translation-ready.

Optional extras are off until you add a key: software tracking shows WordPress, theme and plugin changes on your traffic chart, so you see what changed right before visits dropped. The plugin’s readme lists exactly what is sent in each case.

Software tracking: see what changed before visits dropped

Traffic drops rarely come out of nowhere. Often a plugin update, a new theme version or a WordPress upgrade went out just before. With an optional report key (GhostStat app → Software Development → Connect), your site tells GhostStat which WordPress version, PHP version, themes and plugins it runs, plus every install, update, activation and removal.

GhostStat draws those changes on your traffic chart. So when visits fall on a Tuesday, you see that a plugin update went out on Monday evening, and whether it was a person, an automatic update or WP-CLI that did it. Reporting fatal PHP errors, with the plugin or theme they came from, is a separate opt-in. Nothing about your visitors or your users is part of these reports, and removing the report key stops them.

From the snippet to the plugin

Already using the GhostStat snippet in your theme? Remove it from the theme, install the plugin and paste the same site key. Your numbers continue without a gap, because the site key decides where the data goes, not the way the tracker is added. The plugin has one advantage over a theme snippet: it keeps working when you switch themes.

Running GhostStat for a client? Each WordPress site gets its own site key, and every “See why in GhostStat” link on the statistics page opens the matching report for that site in the GhostStat app.

Want to go deeper?

The plugin shows the essentials. The GhostStat app adds heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, visitor journeys and more, and every tool is included on every plan. See the features page, or open the read-only demo account from the home page.

Sources

• WordPress.org: GhostStat Analytics in the WordPress plugin directory
• GhostStat: Privacy policy