How to Properly Setup Google Analytics in WordPress
Want to know how people are finding your site, which blog posts are most popular, or how many of your visitors are using mobile devices? All of that and more can be easily found out using Google Analytics and MonsterInsights. In this article, we’ll show you how to set up your Google Analytics account and install it on your WordPress site using MonsterInsights.
Step 1: Sign In to Google
The first thing you’ll need to do is log in or sign up for a Google account.
To get started, you’ll need to open the Google Analytics website and click the Sign In link in the top right corner of the page.
Then click Analytics at the top of the dropdown menu that appears.
On the next page, you can log in to your existing Google account if you have one, or click the Create account link to create a new Google account.
Step 2: Sign Up For Google Analytics
After you’ve signed in to your Google account, you’ll need to sign up for Google Analytics. Click the Sign Up button on the right side of the page to get started.
Next you’ll need to enter the settings for the site you want to start tracking.
Make sure the Website option is selected at the top.
Then you can scroll down to enter your website information. You’ll need to name your Google Analytics account, and enter your website name, URL, and industry, as well as your time zone.
After filling in your website details, you can scroll down a bit to customize your data sharing settings. When you’re finished selecting your options, you can click the Get Tracking ID button at the bottom of the page.
In the popup window that appears, you can review and accept the terms of service.
That’s it! You’re now signed up for Google Analytics.
Step 3: Set Up MonsterInsights
Normally, you’d have to insert your Google Analytics tracking code into your WordPress website’s code.
But with MonsterInsights, you don’t need to worry about using any code.
Instead, you can get started by downloading the MonsterInsights plugin. To do that, you’ll need to login to your MonsterInsights account and download the plugin zip file.
Once you have the zip file, navigate to the site where you want to install MonsterInsights and go to the WordPress admin dashboard.
Then navigate to Plugins » Add New and click the Upload Plugin button at the top.
On the next screen, you can click the Choose File button to select the zip file you just downloaded. Then click the Install Now button to upload the file and install the plugin on your site.
Once the plugin has been uploaded and installed, you can click the Activate Plugin button to activate it on your site.
After the plugin is activated, you’ll see a few messages at the top of your dashboard. To set up your Google Analytics account with MonsterInsights, click the Google Analytics settings link.
This will bring you to the Insights » Settings menu. Now you can click the Authenticate with your Google account button to start the process.
On the next screen, select your Google account.
Next, allow MonsterInsights the proper permissions.
Finally, select the profile for your website, click the I’m not a robot checkbox, and then click Complete Authentication.
That’s it! You’re all set.
It can take a few hours for Google Analytics to start collecting data.
Once it does, you can go to Insights » Reports to see how your site is doing.
We hope this tutorial helped you to set up Google Analytics with MonsterInsights.
If you liked this article, then please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more free tutorials.
Neal Umphred
Excellent! Easy to follow instructions—even for technically inept people like me.
Marjorie Dadhich
Thanks for posting this; it was really helpful!
Candy
I’m so glad I found this! I was getting very frustrated! Thanks
KeriLynn Engel
Thank you, Candy! Glad you found it helpful 🙂 Feel free to check out WPBeginner for more beginner-friendly WordPress tutorials!
Kimberly
Excited try this, but at the last step it won’t let me select my website. It’ll only let me select the alternative which is All Web Site…..
MonsterInsights Team
Hi there,
That’s the correct view. The default Google view for a website is called “All Website Data”. The heading name of the website is there for users who have more than 1 Google view per property and more than 1 property to help them separate their Google view/properties
G. P. Gautam
Hello MonsterInsights Team,
I just try this plugin and setup very well in my website by reading this tutorial. It is really useful and working correctly.
Thank you.
KeriLynn Engel
Thank you, G.P.! Glad you found it useful! You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more Google Analytics and MonsterInsights tutorials if you like 🙂
Christian Nelson
I really appreciate this very complete step-by-step explanation…unusual to get something this good…thank you.
KeriLynn Engel
Thanks so much, Christian! Glad you found it useful 🙂 If you like, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more step-by-step tutorials.
Dilan
Do i need to manually add google analytics tracking code script to my wordpress site ?
KeriLynn Engel
Hi Dilan! Nope, if you follow this tutorial and use MonsterInsights, there’s no need to manually add the tracking code. MonsterInsights handles all that for you, so there’s no need to touch any code.
Rick L.
What happens if you already have GA tracking code implemented on your site? Do you need to remove it? If so, do you lose your historical data?
MonsterInsights Team
Hi there,
Yes you’ll want to remove it. Your historical data is tied to your Google Analytics profile not the actual tracking code, so MonsterInsights will be reporting it’s Google Analytics data into the same place. Thus your historical data will be just fine, and from the point of view of Google Analytics’s reports, the newly collected data will go to the same place as your “historical” data, so on reports like session count it will appear as if nothing changed; the biggest change you will notice is you will be able to get more reporting out of Google, for example in the Top Events area we’ll start adding the outbound link click events (if you have that feature turned on) for example.
-Chris
Trish
Perfect!!! So glad to have found this and as usual, you guys rocked it! Thanks 🙂
Harry
Thanks for the explanation, but I still have one concern, if you can help me out. After we successfully set up your plugin, can we normally add new pages on our website? I mean, is the tracking code automatically inserted in all pages that we create after we installed MI plugin?
Thanks
MonsterInsights Team
MonsterInsights automatically outputs the tracking code on all pages/posts created before and after install of the plugin.
Harry
And just one question. We have installed the code with MI plugin last week, and I thought that it worked normally. But now I see that we still can’t see age and gender reports. I clicked and confirmed all the needed things in property settings, but still nothing. In the code there is “displayfeatures” line, can this be the reason? I read that this line is not necessary anymore since it can just be toggled in property settings. Any help?
Thanks
Shahzad Saeed
Harry,
To track more information of your visitors like gender and age, you’ll need to enable demographics and interests report in Google Analytics.
Deborah Kay
If I already have Google Analytics setup on my website and am using another plugin for e-commerce tracking, can I just uninstall those plugins and install yours?
Shahzad Saeed
Of course! Make sure to remove other Analytics plugin while using MonsterInsights. Otherwise, Analytics may double track your traffic.
You should also try our eCommerce addon, which gives you all the data you need to optimize your eCommerce store for conversions.
Yaron Ofek
If I use your plugin to acquire the tracking code, who owns the google tracking code? Would I have access to the data accumulated to that traffic code (on the google analytics website) if for any reason I choose to delete the plugin? Or would I only have access to the data through my WP dashboard, and only as long as I have your plugin active and installed?
Shahzad Saeed
Hey Yaron,
Thanks for your interest in MonsterInsights and letting us know your concerns. If you decide to uninstall the plugin in future, you can still access your previous tracking data in Google Analytics. It won’t disappear.
If you want, you can then set up Analytics natively and continue tracking your site without any issues. But you’ll definitely miss the cool tracking features MonsterInsights provides.
P Jain
I guess it took about 15 minutes before the code started to appear in the source code. It seems to be working now. Thanks for a great plugin guys!
Shahzad Saeed
Jain,
Happy to see that you liked the plugin. Thanks!
Daren
I am setting Monster Insights up for a client now and would like to know what I need the client to do on his end in order for me to authenticate the account. I have full access to the WordPress dashboard but not his GA account.
MonsterInsights Team
Hi there,
You will need to have your client give you access to their GA account to do this. Google has a very flexible and straightforward permission management system for Google Analytics, so they can add you to the GA property relatively easily. They’ll want to follow this guide here: https://beta.monsterinsights.com/docs/how-to-grant-user-access-in-google-analytics/
-Chris
Olivier
Hi
My administrator has installed MI on my Word Press website and I have set up Google Analytics and authenticated MI with my Google Account.
I want to track outbound links clicked on my website. Do I simply look at the reports in Google Analytics or is there more that I need to do in MI on my website. Thanks
MonsterInsights Team
Hi there,
If you haven’t already you’ll want to turn on tracking for outbound links in MonsterInsights. Then you can view the results in Google Analytics following this guide if you’re a Lite user, and if you’re a Plus or Pro level MonsterInsights user, you can view the top links on on the brand new reporting dashboard for paid MonsterInsights users inside of WordPress on the Publisher Report.
Gerald
I’m trying to authenticate my monsterinsight but the popup at authentication doesn’t show the lower buttons (cancel and next, hence I’m stuck.
MonsterInsights Team
Hi there,
This is caused by a plugin conflict. If you can get in touch with us on our contact page, we’ll be happy to get you sorted out
-Chris
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