I have to admit – I’m a control freak. I track and check stats for every effort (or almost every): every post, every email I send to my list, every article and sometimes I find myself spending more time looking at stats and tracking results then actually producing something that helps me earn.

Since starting this blog I have discovered so many more different statistics I can track that it scared me … So I decided to stop the insanity and find a tool that will remove the work that has no real meaning and no impact on final results and provide me with stats for [tag-tec]WordPress[/tag-tec] that actually matter. Well, lo and behold!

WordPress [tag-tec]blog[/tag-tec] platform, even when used as stand-alone installation as was in my case, has an option to get stats that actually matter to a blog writer. It comes in form of [tag-tec]plugin[/tag-tec] called Automattic Stats that will display meaningful information on your blog in nice and simple format. It will provide you with details about page views, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave.

There are couple drawbacks although at least one of them can be viewed as benefit.

• To get the plugin running you will need an API key from wordpress.com similar to Akismet plugin. This key will be required to activate the plugin but as soon as you do – statistics about your blog will begin to flaw. Which brings us to second part …

• All statistics are displayed on wordpress.com servers and you access them through main WordPress dashboard with your registered account. Account is required to get the API key and doesn’t require having a blog with them. It is also a benefit since all statistics hosted on THEIR servers and don’t introduce extra load on yours.

I do have to admit that statistics I’ve been getting from this plugin are a lot more useful to me for quick overview then more extensive Google Analytics combined with Webmaster Tools although don’t completely replace them. I personally think they are great when combined. Automattic Stats provide you with a great overview of your blog performance while Google tools should be used for deeper analysis. Either way this is one great plugin I can highly recommend.

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