WP Manifestindependent plugin directory
manifest / analytics / simplest-analytics

The Simplest Analytics

Privacy-first, lightweight, and cache-compatible analytics. No cookies, GDPR compliant, and tracks all bots including AI crawlers.

by Jens Sage · github.com/jenss/simplest-analytics · website

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/jenss/simplest-analytics/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/jenss/simplest-analytics ↗

Privacy-first, lightweight analytics. No cookies, GDPR compliant, cache-compatible, with bot and AI crawler tracking.

Description

The Simplest Analytics provides essential website statistics without compromising visitor privacy or site performance.

Key Features

  • No cookies - No consent banners needed
  • GDPR compliant - IP addresses are anonymized before storage
  • Cache compatible - Works with page caching through hybrid tracking
  • Bot tracking - Monitors search engine crawlers and AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.)
  • Lightweight - Under 1KB JavaScript, minimal database footprint
  • Self-hosted - Your data stays on your server

Privacy by Design

  • IP addresses are truncated (last octet zeroed) before any storage
  • Unique visitors identified via daily-rotating salted hashes
  • No persistent identifiers or fingerprinting
  • Optional Do Not Track (DNT) header support
  • Configurable data retention with automatic cleanup

What Gets Tracked

  • Page views and unique visitors
  • Referrer domains (not full URLs)
  • Device types (desktop, mobile, tablet)
  • Country (via CDN headers or optional geo-IP database)
  • Search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.)
  • AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.)

How It Works

The Simplest Analytics uses a hybrid tracking approach:

  1. Server-side tracking runs on each uncached page request
  2. JavaScript fallback fires only when pages are served from cache
  3. Both methods use the same privacy-preserving data collection

This ensures accurate tracking regardless of your caching setup.

Installation

  1. Upload the simplest-analytics folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
  3. View statistics at Settings → The Simplest Analytics

The plugin automatically creates the necessary database tables on activation.

Optional: Geo-IP Database

For country detection without relying on CDN headers:

  1. Download the free DB-IP Country Lite database from db-ip.com
  2. Extract and rename to dbip-country-lite.mmdb
  3. Upload to wp-content/uploads/simplest-analytics/

If you use Cloudflare or a similar CDN, country detection works automatically via headers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this require cookie consent?

No. The Simplest Analytics does not use cookies or any persistent client-side storage.

Is this GDPR compliant?

Yes. IP addresses are anonymized before storage, no personal data is retained, and data can be automatically deleted after a configurable retention period.

Will it work with my caching plugin?

Yes. The hybrid tracking approach ensures pageviews are counted even when pages are served from cache.

What bots are tracked?

Search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot, Baiduspider, Yandex) and AI/marketing bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, SEMrushBot, AhrefsBot) are identified and tracked separately from human visitors.

Can I exclude certain users from tracking?

Yes. By default, administrators are excluded. You can configure which user roles to exclude in Settings.

Does this slow down my site?

No. The tracking JavaScript is under 1KB and loads asynchronously. Server-side tracking adds minimal overhead.

Screenshots

  1. Analytics overview with key metrics
  2. Top pages report
  3. Referrer sources
  4. Bot and crawler activity
  5. Privacy-focused settings

Changelog

1.3.1

  • Fixed tracking on cached pages - pages served from PHP-level cache now correctly tracked via JS fallback
  • Added deduplication to prevent duplicate pageviews within 30-second window
  • Changed cache detection from boolean flag to timestamp-based signature
  • Fixed duplicate array keys in REST API data handling

1.3.0

  • Added time-on-page tracking with session duration
  • Added pageview identifiers for accurate session tracking
  • Added transient caching for improved admin performance
  • Display average duration per page in statistics
  • Enhanced JavaScript tracker with heartbeat and visibility detection
  • Optimized database queries with indexing

1.2.0

  • Added Countries tab with flag emojis and geographic statistics
  • Added Browsers tab with browser name detection and visual charts
  • Added Devices breakdown with percentage visualization
  • Added Campaign tracking with UTM parameter support
  • Improved user agent parsing for accurate browser identification
  • Added horizontal bar charts for visual statistics

1.1.0

  • Added rate limiting to prevent API abuse
  • Improved memory efficiency for high-traffic sites
  • Fixed sendBeacon compatibility for cached page tracking
  • Added referrers report tab
  • Added uninstall cleanup for complete data removal
  • Fixed NULL handling in database inserts
  • Improved XSS prevention in admin templates

1.0.0

  • Initial release

Upgrade Notice

1.3.1

Important bugfix for sites using page caching. Ensures all visitors are tracked without duplicates.

1.3.0

Feature release adding time-on-page tracking and performance improvements through caching.

1.2.0

Feature release adding geographic, browser, device, and campaign statistics with visual charts.

1.1.0

Recommended update with security improvements and bug fixes for cached page tracking.