It does work, but I can tell it’s not getting everything. If you have an ad-blocker running (or you use Brave or another auto-ad-blocking browser), it probably didn’t see you. Also, the stats it actually gives are a little lackluster. It pretty much just gives unique visitors, page views, and sometimes the location. The referrer section does exist but it’s not very reliable (where on Twitter did they come from?).
Now we come to the obvious solution, Google Analytics. Lots more data and ways to sort through it. Ok. Also even more stomped on by ad-blockers than Jetpack is. Oof. But there’s good tags and referral tracking! Yay! But it’s illegal in the EU at worst, and GDPR requires a cookie banner at best. Eugh.
Also, it’s Google. Ew.
So Google is a no-go. Then I came across a little list pulled together by Matthias Ott of various light-weight, GDPR-compliant analytics providers and it’s like my prayers have been answered! A little research and some recommendations later, both Studio Yip and my personal contact site are running analytics through Plausible. It avoids most ad-blockers, has campaign tags, doesn’t feed your or my data to the beast, and the best part? I don’t need to put a stupid cookie banner up!
Of course, it’s brand new so there’s very little actual data there to look at at the moment, but I’m hoping this will scratch that itch of wanting to know how often my stuff gets looked at. Till then!
