So, Google analytics is pretty simple to install.  Just put a piece of javascript in the footer of your site, and in no time Google is telling you all sorts of information about the site visitors.

I’ve had this blog up and running a few days now, so I figured I would install analytics to see what kind of traction, if any, I am getting.  I follow good SEO practices in my urls and I write, what I think, is useful content, so I should be getting a little traffic, right?

I created a Google analytics profile for the blog, but then decided to search for plugins that handle analytics, instead of me manually pasting javascript code in the footer of my theme file.  Especially since I may change my theme at some point in the future.

Low and behold, my search lead me to Google Analytics for WordPress, a plugin by joostdevalk that installs analytics and gives user friendly options for customizing it.  It even allows for traffic from admins to not show up on the analytics report.  That’s probably a good thing for me since I tend to hit my blog a lot, for now, and want realistic numbers when looking at reporting.

I just installed it today, so I can’t verify anything about how good the reporting is, but the reviews all come back good and it looks very useful at the surface.  More to come later.