Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google for tracking visits to your site. I’ve written a plugin that makes it very easy for you to use Google Analytics on your site. To use it, just enable the “Google Analytics” plugin from your Plugins menu (Posts->Plugins), and follow the instructions on the Settings Page (Settings->Google Analytics). (You won’t have to do any pasting of crazy script code into all your pages, like Google suggests – the plugin handles that!)

It will require you to register an account with Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics, but they’re free and a breeze to set up. Once you create your Google Analytics account, you’ll be prompted to register your site with them. This just means that you tell them the site’s URL, and they give you back a code that looks something like this: UA-1234567-8.

That code is what you’ll put into the Settings->Google Analytics form in your dashboard, and you’re set! You’ll be able to see detailed visitor information at http://www.google.com/analytics