Navigating the Traffic Dashboard in Jetpack Stats

Jetpack Stats Traffic dashboard empowers you with actionable insights to understand and optimize your website’s performance.

Some features in this documentation are exclusively available to websites with a commercial Jetpack Stats plan or as part of a Jetpack Complete bundle plan. 

The Jetpack Stats Traffic View

On the Traffic view in your Jetpack Stats dashboard, you can find 7-day highlights, engagement (views and visitors) graphs, top posts and pages, website referrer data, visitor locations, top search terms, and so on. You can also filter your engagement data to focus on daily, weekly, monthly, or annual traffic.  

To access the Traffic view:

1. Go to your site’s WP Admin.
2. Then, go to Jetpack → Stats. 
3. Click the Traffic tab.

Note: The data in this view is updated every 30 minutes.

7-day highlights

7-day Highlights provide a quick look at the number of your visitors, views, likes, and comments over the last 7 days, excluding the current day. The trends shown are also compared to the previous 7-day period. 

This section shows your site’s 7-day highlights be default, but you can switch between 7-day highlights and 30-day highlights with the kebab (︙) menu icon to the right.

Understanding the difference between views and visitors

A view refers to when a visitor loads or reloads a page. A visitor refers to when we see a user or browser for the first time in a selected time frame. 

Note: A visitor is an individual looking at your site. A visitor can view your site’s different pages or the same page multiple times. Therefore, you can expect views to be higher than visitors.

Weekly and monthly unique visitors

Weekly and monthly unique visitors may be less than daily or total visitors if the same visitor appears multiple times. Views are reported faster than visitors, so don’t fret if counts don’t match immediately. Yearly totals are the sum of monthly totals. 

View and visitor data during a selected time period

The selected time period is highlighted in a different color, and the stats for that period will appear below the graph. If you click on another bar in the graph, the time period will change, and the information below the graph will show the stats for the new time period.

When you hover your mouse over a bar on the graph, highlights for that time period will pop up, as shown above.

Engagement Metrics: Likes and comments

The charts also include tabs for viewing stats for the number of likes and comments on your site. Click the Likes or Comments tabs to display a bar chart for those stats.

Analyzing Popular Posts and pages

You can identify your digital gems by uncovering which posts and pages attract the most attention.

When someone visits your post or page by directly clicking on the link, it counts as a view. However, if they read the post while looking at your website’s homepage or blog archive page, it won’t count as a view for that specific post or page. Instead, it will only add to the total views of your website.

Note: Post and page views count toward your website’s total views, but not all views are tied to a specific post or page URL. Other views, such as category, tag, date, author archive, and search result pages, only count towards total views. In your stats, this appears as “Home page / Archives”. 

If you have a static front page, any views of that page will be listed under its title. If you have a shop set up through WooCommerce, your shop’s landing page stats will be included in the “Home page / Archives” numbers since the shop page is an archive of your products.

Each post or page has a green-tinted bar overlaying its title. The length of the bar shows the percentage of views that post or page got compared to the others listed. The green bars help you see the proportion of each item’s views relative to the others.

You can click an item on the list to view additional highlights and insights for that post or page. You can also click View all to see a more comprehensive list.

Referrers

Gain insights into where your visitors come from, whether it’s a blog mention, a social media share, or an organic search.

When someone clicks on a link to your website from one of these sources, it counts as a view associated with that referrer. 

If you see a down arrow next to a referrer, you can click on it to get more specific details. For instance, expanding Search Engines will show more information about particular search engine referrers like Google and Bing.

Note: The total number of referrers may not match the total views, as some visitors may come to your site directly by typing the URL, clicking a link in an email, or through another application that opens the browser.

Clicking any of the referrer items will take you to the web address displayed.

Marking spam referrers

Traffic sources differ, and you may consider some referrers to be spam. Internet bots, for example, crawl various websites periodically. While they don’t affect your site’s security, you may not want to include them in your stats. 

Note: Your stats won’t be affected by marking a referrer as spam. It will only prevent it from showing up in your referrer stats.

To mark a referrer as spam:

1. Go to Traffic → Referrers.
2. Hover over the referrer and click the warning symbol next to the URL. 
3. Click Mark as Spam.

Each referrer on the list has a warning icon next to their view count, except for a few allowlisted ones like WordPress.com.

Marking a referrer as spam sends it to a block list for your site, and it won’t appear in the future on your site stats. Note that you cannot undo this action.

Referrer discrepancies

Search engines and browsers have tightened their privacy policies in recent years, which has impacted the way referrers and search terms are reported. Specifically, many browsers have started to limit the sharing of referrer data to enhance user privacy. This change means that Jetpack Stats may not always receive referrer information, even when visitors come to your site via a search engine or another site.

This will likely create a discrepancy between the total views/visitors count and the specific referrer numbers reported by Jetpack Stats. As a result, a portion of your site’s traffic may appear as if it’s from direct access, even though it actually comes through search engines or other referrers.

A workaround for this discrepancy could be Jetpack Stats’ integration with Google Analytics, which should provide more detailed tracking options that can help close the gap in referrer data and give you a clearer picture of traffic sources.

Also, note that we only display 400 unique items. If your referrers count is higher than 400, you may not find some of them listed.

Views by country 

Visualize your global audience and tailor content or marketing strategies accordingly.

This chart allows you to view the number of views your website has received per country. Click View all to see the data on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. 

Note: If a visitor’s location cannot be determined, their views will not be reflected in the chart. This may occur if a visitor is using an incognito browser or VPN, and their location will appear as “Unknown Region” on your Stats page.

Harnessing UTM Stats for Precision Tracking

The Jetpack UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) helps you track your website’s traffic and performance by using UTM codes. UTM codes are snippets of text that you add to your website’s URLs to track things like the source, medium, and campaign of your traffic.

If you are a free or pay-what-you-want user, you will need to upgrade to a commercial plan to gain access to UTM metrics and other advanced features.

The Jetpack UTM module works by collecting data from your website’s traffic that includes UTM codes. You can create these UTM codes by following the guide here: UTM URL Builder. This UTM data is then displayed in a user-friendly report showing how your website’s traffic is performing.

Based on the analysis proved by Jetpack’s UTM module, you can see which campaigns and models are driving the most traffic to your website.

Once you have added UTM codes to your website’s URLs, you can start tracking your website’s traffic in the Jetpack UTM module report under Jetpack → Stats → Traffic. Detailed steps are below:

1. Navigate to the Traffic page (Jetpack → Stats → Traffic) within your Jetpack dashboard.
2. Look for the stats card labeled “UTM.”
3. Use the dropdowns to select different UTM parameters (such as source, medium, campaign, etc.) and get a detailed view of traffic statistics.

With the UTM module, you can choose to view general UTM stats to check the performance of your campaigns with aggregated data, giving you insights into overall traffic origins and behaviors. 

You can also delve into UTM metrics tailored for individual posts to understand how specific content is performing.

Authors

This allows you to track the amount of traffic generated by each author, which is particularly useful for websites with multiple contributors. This allows you to recognize and reward contributors based on the traffic they drive to your site. By clicking on an author’s name, you can view their most popular posts and pages, as well as the number of views that each has received.

To hide the Authors section, click the gear (⚙) icon at the top-right corner of the Traffic dashboard to open the “Modules visibility” options, and use the toggle to turn off “Authors”.

Search terms

Visitors to your site used these terms, words, and phrases on search engines to discover content on your site. You can then uncover keywords driving organic traffic and refine your SEO strategy accordingly.

Note: If we don’t know the search terms, we display them as “Unknown search terms.” Certain search engines, such as Google, do not disclose search terms due to privacy concerns.

Clicks

Track user behavior beyond your site to understand interests and preferences.

This shows the number of times your website visitors have clicked on external links (links that lead them to other websites). These links may be within your own content, in comments left by your readers, in the names of users who comment on your site, in links to images and media files, and so on. You can then identify popular external links and consider collaborations with those sites.

Video views 

This shows the number of views your Jetpack VideoPress videos have gotten. For a more detailed breakdown of your video stats, click View all at the bottom of the panel. This breakdown contains the following information:

• Impressions: This refers to how many times a video was loaded. 
• Hours Watched: The total number of hours viewers have watched the video.
• Retention Rate: How much of the video has been viewed on average.
• Views: This refers to how many times a viewer clicked the play button on the VideoPress player.

To hide the Videos section, click the gear (⚙) icon in the top-right corner of the Traffic dashboard to open the “Modules visibility” options, and use the toggle to turn off “Videos”.

Devices stats

Track and understand which device sizes, browsers, and operating systems visitors use to access your website. 

This feature will be exclusively available to websites with a commercial Jetpack Stats plan or as part of a Jetpack Complete bundle plan.

Website owners and developers can use this feature to optimize and tailor their content to match the device attributes of their visitors. Under the Devices card in your Traffic tab, you should be able to see a breakdown of your visitors based on the following device attributes:

• Size ( Desktop, Mobile, Tablet…)
• Browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge…)
• (OS) Operating System (Mac, Windows, Android…)

By mastering Jetpack Stats Traffic dashboard, you not only understand your audience better but also craft data-driven strategies to propel your website to new heights. Dive in, explore, and unlock the full potential of your digital presence!