Guides to website analytics

• How to check website traffic

  How to check the traffic on your own site in a few minutes, and what public traffic checkers can and can't tell you about someone else's.

• UTM parameters explained

  What the five UTM parameters do, how to name them, the mistakes that wreck your data and how to read the results.

• Bounce rate

  What bounce rate means, why GA4 and other tools define it differently, and how to work out why yours is high.

• Referral traffic

  What referral traffic is, why the referrer goes missing, and how to see visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and other AI tools.

• AI crawlers

  Which AI bots visit your site, who runs each one, what it is for, and how to allow or block it in robots.txt.

• PII examples

  Plain examples of personal information in analytics, and how to keep it out of your URLs, forms and user IDs.

• Google Analytics alternatives

  Ten Google Analytics alternatives compared from each vendor's own pages: free tiers, prices, cookies, data location, self-hosting, and how to choose.

• How much Google Analytics costs

  What Google says is free and what is paid, with a dated table from its own pages, and the costs that never reach an invoice.

• Google Tag Manager vs Google Analytics

  GTM delivers tags, Analytics measures. What each does, the Google tag mix-up, and whether you need both.

• SEO and Google Analytics

  Which tool answers which SEO question: Search Console for searches and impressions, analytics for what visitors do after they land.

• Adobe Analytics vs Google Analytics

  A dated side-by-side of Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics from each vendor's own pages, who each suits, and what to use if you need neither.

• Real-time website analytics

  What live really means, when real-time data helps (launches, sends, deploys, sales) and when daily totals are enough.

• Remove Google Analytics

  Where the Google Analytics tag hides, how to remove it, how to check it's gone, and how to delete the property.

• Analytics for many sites

  How to set up Google Analytics for an agency or an owner of many sites: accounts, properties, access, a checklist, and one screen for all of them.

• Direct traffic

  What direct traffic means, where it really comes from, how it differs from organic, and how to shrink it with tagged links.

• Who visits your website

  What a website owner can and can't see about visitors: counts, sources, pages and country, not names. Plus company lookup tools and privacy.

• Unique visitors

  What unique visitors, users and sessions each count, a worked example, and why two analytics tools can differ.

• Wix analytics

  What Wix Analytics shows, where to find it, and how to add Google Analytics or Stickybeak to a Wix site.

• Average session duration

  What average session duration is, how it differs from engagement time, and what a good number depends on.

• Bot traffic

  What bot traffic is, how to spot it in your analytics, which bots are good and which are bad, how analytics tools filter it and what you can do to stop it.

• Google Analytics and GDPR

  Is Google Analytics GDPR compliant? The cookies it sets, when you need consent, how consent mode works and where US data transfers stand. Not legal advice.

• New vs returning visitors

  What new and returning visitors are, how GA4 counts them, how to find them, how to read the ratio, and why cookieless tools count them differently.

• Organic traffic

  What organic traffic means, how GA4 files it, organic vs paid and direct, and why the count can be off.

• Shopify analytics

  What Shopify analytics shows, where to find it, and how to add Google Analytics or Stickybeak to a Shopify store.

• Squarespace analytics

  What Squarespace Analytics shows, where to find it, and how to add Google Analytics or Stickybeak to a Squarespace site.

• Website traffic drop

  A checklist for a sudden drop in website traffic: broken tracking, Google updates, lost rankings, seasonality and site changes, and how to tell which with Search Console and analytics.

• Matomo vs Google Analytics

  A dated side-by-side of Matomo and Google Analytics from each vendor's own pages: price, hosting, data ownership, retention, and who each suits.

• Best website analytics tools

  Ten website analytics tools, free and paid, with prices and limits from each vendor's own pages, grouped by what you need.

• PostHog pricing

  PostHog's free allowances and per-unit prices from its own pricing page, a calculator for events, recordings and flag requests, and worked examples.

• Privacy-friendly analytics

  What makes website analytics privacy-friendly, what you give up for it, and how the main privacy-first tools describe themselves, from their own pages checked 23 Oct 2026.

• PostHog alternatives

  PostHog alternatives sorted by the job you need done, with free allowances and starting prices side by side.

• Plausible pricing

  Plausible's three plans at every pageview tier, the free self-hosted Community Edition and what it leaves out, and cost beside Fathom, Simple Analytics and Stickybeak.

• Conversion funnel

  Funnel stages with a worked example, how to build one from analytics goals, the usual leaks by stage and how to measure a fix.

Prefer to calculate something? Try the free tools. These guides are written by Flindev, who make Stickybeak, live analytics for people who run more than one site. Read about Stickybeak.