Web analytics guides

Practical guides to simple website analytics: how to see your traffic, track visitors from ChatGPT and other AI assistants, go cookie-free and pick the right tool.

• How to see your website traffic (for free)
  The fastest ways to check how many people visit your site — built-in stats on Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and WordPress, free analytics tools, and what each number means.
• How to track traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants
  AI assistants now send real visitors to websites. Here is how to see that traffic in your analytics, why part of it hides as "direct", and how to measure it properly.
• Lightweight Google Analytics alternatives (free and cookie-free)
  Google Analytics 4 is powerful but heavy and cookie-based. Here are simpler, privacy-friendly alternatives — and how to pick one for a small site.
• Cookieless analytics: how it works and what you give up
  How web analytics can count visitors without cookies, what data it can and can't give you, and when it is enough for your site.
• Free website visitor counter: add one in 2 minutes (HTML code)
  How to add a free visitor counter to any website with one line of HTML — and why a private analytics counter beats an old-style public hit counter.
• Yandex Metrica alternatives in 2026: what to use instead
  An honest comparison of Yandex Metrica alternatives — lightweight counters, Google Analytics, self-hosted tools and heatmap services — and how to switch without losing data.

Free tools

• Free UTM builder: campaign URL generator
  Build UTM-tagged links for newsletters, social posts, Google Ads, Meta Ads and more in seconds. Free, no sign-up, runs entirely in your browser.

Web analytics glossary

• Visits, visitors and page views
  The three basic traffic numbers — how many pages were opened, how many visits there were and how many people.
• Bounce rate
  The share of visits where someone left almost immediately — one page, no interaction.
• Average session duration
  How long a visit lasts on average, from the first to the last activity.
• Pages per visit
  How many pages a visitor opens on average during one visit.
• Conversion rate
  The share of visits that end with a desired action — a purchase, a lead, a sign-up.
• Direct traffic
  Visits with no known source — no referrer and no UTM tags.
• Referral traffic
  Visits from links on other websites — not from search engines, social networks or ads.