Top 5 WordPress Detailed Visitor Statistics Plugins of 2011

Having a detailed visitor statistics plugin is a great addition to any WordPress blogger or site owner’s toolbox. Choosing the perfect visitor details plugin can be hard, so let WPSnacks help with our picks for the Top 5 WordPress Statistics Plugins currently for 2011.

There are thousands of free plugins found at the WordPress Plugin Directory. Among these, there are 5 that really stand out from the crowd, and are listed below:

1. Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin allows you to easily track your WordPress site’s visitors using the Google Analytics tracking code, which is handled completely by this plugin. You just insert your Google Analytics tracking code into the plugin settings and then you can track your site’s statistics from your Google Analytics account dashboard.

2. WordPress.com Stats

This statistics plugin is very popular, especially among WordPress.com hosted blogs, but can be used with self hosted blogs as well. It collects information about pageviews, popularity of posts/pages, traffic sources data, what links are clicked, etc. The one downside in my opinion is that it adds a tiny smiley face in a random place on your site which is what the plugin uses to track visitors. This is also a part of the widely popular Jetpack by WordPress.com.

3. StatCounter- Free Real Time Visitor Stats

This plugin is powered by the popular StatCounter.com site. It gives real time detailed statistics about your site’s visitors. This is a personal favorite of mine because of the wealth of information it gives. It includes a visible counter option, which means no ugly smiley like the WordPress.com Stats plugin. This is one of the plugins in use here at WPSnacks.

4. WassUp

This tracking plugin allows you to track your visitors in real-time. It is easy to read from within your WordPress Dashboard and includes a lot of detailed statistics from your site’s visitors. The key feature of this plugin is it’s easy to use interface.

5. StatPress Visitors

This plugin is a fork of the original StatPress plugin and shows real-time statistics for your blog. It corrects many of the issues found in previous versions of StatPress and StatPress Reloaded. It gives a lot of important details about your site’s visitors in a clean interface that is easy to read. It has lots of eye-catching pop-up tooltips that make it easy to understand what you are reading.