Content analytics for publishers and content creators

If you run a business based on content today, understanding what’s actually working is beneficial.

Which articles attract the most readers? What topics resonate with your audience? Where do your visitors come from? How do they convert into subscribers or revenue?

People build audiences and businesses with content in many different ways, such as:

• Media companies and digital publications
• Content teams at SaaS companies running large blogs
• SEO-driven sites (reviews, finance, SaaS comparisons)
• Newsletter businesses (Substack writers, niche newsletters)
• Indie blogs that monetize via ads or affiliates
• Creators building audiences on platforms like YouTube, Twitter/X, or LinkedIn
• Writers building subscription-based publications

Some focus on audience growth, others on revenue or building a long-term publication. Some are only writing for the joy of this art.

Whichever way you’re growing your content engine, you can utilize simple, privacy-friendly, without cookie banners, analytics platform that will be up on your site in minutes and give you all the insights on one simple dashboard that is easy to understand at a glance.

The best news: You don’t have to struggle with Google Analytics anymore.

1. Why Google Analytics falls short for publishers
   1. Google Analytics is overwhelming and an overkill
   2. Google Analytics requires a privacy policy, cookie prompt and user consent
   3. Google Analytics slows down your site and worsens the visitor experience
   4. Google Analytics is inaccurate
2. How publishers use Plausible?
   1. Understand which stories resonate with readers
   2. Understand how readers discover your content
   3. Analyze your SEO performance and organic traffic
   4. See what readers are engaging with at this moment
   5. Connect content to subscriptions and revenue (codeless)
   6. Track monetization metrics and ad engagement
   7. A/B test headlines and images
   8. Easy to integrate with your publishing platform
3. Use Plausible to refine your editorial strategy
4. Test Plausible Analytics alongside GA

Why Google Analytics falls short for publishers

Google Analytics is the default choice for most websites. Even though it is a very useful and powerful tool used on the majority of websites on the web, it brings several issues.

But for publishers and content teams, the biggest challenge today isn’t just complexity. It’s that the data itself is becoming less reliable.

Here’s a look at why we created Plausible Analytics as a great Google Analytics alternative for publishers, media houses, and basically, any content creator.

Google Analytics is overwhelming and an overkill

Google Analytics collects so much data from website visitors that it can showcase more than 125 different reports and almost 300 individual metrics. You will rarely have a need for more than a handful of these. This makes GA overkill for most content teams and publishers.

Many try to simplify GA by creating custom reports and dashboards. Some even take training courses to learn how to use it, how to understand the different metrics and extract actionable insights from them.

On the other hand, Plausible Analytics is built with simplicity in mind. Anyone can understand all the metrics we present at a glance and without having any training or prior analytics experience. Everything you need to know is on one page.

You can get an overview of all the most actionable metrics in one minute and get on with tasks that you enjoy more such as creating new content or engaging with your audience.

Google Analytics requires a privacy policy, cookie prompt and user consent

There are several requirements for using Google Analytics. Some from Google’s side and others from the different privacy regulations.

Google for instance requires you to have a privacy policy with details on your usage of Google Analytics.

You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies, identifiers for mobile devices or similar technology used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data. You will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that a User is provided with clear and comprehensive information about, and consents to, the storing and accessing of cookies or other information on the User’s device where such activity occurs in connection with the Service and where providing such information and obtaining such consent is required by law.

When visitors decline cookies, their activity is not tracked. This creates a gap in your analytics, where a portion of your audience is simply missing from your reports. It literally causes more than half of your data to be missing, according to an independent study.

For publishers trying to understand which stories resonate or how readers engage, this can make decision-making much harder.

On top of this, Google Analytics places multiple cookies on the machines of your visitors which means that you need to ask for cookie consent from your visitors too.

These are things that many site owners and content creators simply don’t want to nor have the time or capacity to deal with. And the value that GA provides may not be worth it in terms of what it takes to have it running with regards to dealing with privacy policy and cookie consent.

On the other hand, Plausible Analytics is compliant with the different privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA and PECR out of the box! We don’t use cookies and we don’t collect any personal data from your visitors either. This means that you don’t need to have a privacy policy regarding Plausible Analytics and you don’t need to have a cookie banner nor ask to get consent from your visitors.

You keep your site simple, clean and optimized for your visitors. No need to put any time and effort into legal aspects. You can focus on creating content and growing your audience.

Google Analytics slows down your site and worsens the visitor experience

Google Analytics is a bloated script that collects a lot of unnecessary data and it’s not useful for the majority of site owners. This can lead to your site having slower loading times. It is common that the different speed tests including Google’s own PageSpeed Insights flag Google Analytics as one of the elements that slow down a site.

On the other hand, Plausible Analytics script is lightweight. Your site will keep loading fast and your visitors will have a smooth experience.

Google Analytics is inaccurate

Google Analytics is the most widely used tracking script on the web. This makes it a big target. Browsers such as Brave and privacy extensions like uBlock Origin block Google Analytics by default, and some browser privacy settings can also prevent it from running.

These are used by millions of web users who won’t be counted in your website statistics. It’s not uncommon to see 40% or even more of the audience on a tech website blocking Google Analytics.

This means your analytics may underreport traffic and engagement, especially for audiences that are more privacy-conscious.

On the other hand, Plausible Analytics is privacy-friendly by default, so it sees significantly less level of blockage. We also have a proxy that allows you to run our script as a first party connection from your domain name. You may very well see more accurate (and higher) visitor numbers.

Moreover, in a test we conducted, we simulated bot traffic to a website and observed that GA4 failed to detect it, displaying the bots as real users—unlike Plausible, which correctly identified and excluded them from the stats.

How publishers use Plausible?

Media companies and digital publishers are among our largest customer groups. The following are some of the core ways publishers use Plausible.

Understand which stories resonate with readers

Amongst your hundreds or thousands of articles, some perform well immediately while others build long-term readership. Plausible makes it easy to see how each story performs.

Open the Top Pages report in your Plausible dashboard. You can quickly see which pages attract the most readers and how those readers engage with each story.

The report includes metrics such as:

• Visitors and pageviews to show which stories attract the most attention
• Bounce rate
• Time on page to understand how long readers stay with the article
• Scroll depth to see how far readers move through the story

For example, an article with strong time-on-page and deeper scroll depth likely indicates that readers are actively engaging with the content.

For long-form journalism or feature stories, the engagement signals especially help editorial teams see whether readers stay with the article or leave early.

These insights help shape editorial planning and identify the topics that matter most to your readers.

You can also make use of the Entry Pages and Exit Pages reports to know where readers start their visit and where they leave your site.

You can also segment this data by traffic source, campaign, or device type to better understand how different audiences engage with your content.

Understand how readers discover your content

Publishers rely on a mix of traffic sources including search engines, social media, newsletters, and direct visits. The Traffic Sources report in Plausible shows where your readers originate.

You can see traffic from:

• search engines
• AI platforms
• social media
• newsletters
• news aggregators and RSS readers
• referral links
• UTMs
• direct sources

...basically, every source that brings you traffic. This helps you understand which distribution channels bring engaged readers to your site.

Analyze your SEO performance and organic traffic

Search remains one of the most important ways readers discover content.

In Plausible, open the Traffic Sources report and filter by Organic search.

This shows:

• how many visitors come from search engines and AI
• which sources drive the most traffic
• how your organic traffic changes over time

You can then combine this with the Top Pages report to see which articles attract search traffic and continue to perform long after publication.

Or look at Entry Pages to see the pages actually attracting organic traffic.

You can even connect Search Console to Plausible to see the search terms in Google bringing you traffic and a better analysis of SEO efforts.

Together, these insights help publishers understand not just what ranks in search, but which content actually keeps readers engaged and brings consistent traffic over time.

See what readers are engaging with at this moment

Publishing is often fast-moving. Editors want to understand how newly published stories perform as readers discover them.

Plausible includes a real-time analytics view that shows what is happening on your site at this moment.

You can see:

• how many readers are currently on your site
• which articles they are reading right now
• where those readers are coming from
• what goals were met in the last 30 minutes

This helps editorial teams quickly identify when a story is gaining traction.

For example, if an article suddenly receives traffic from social media or search, editors may move it higher on the homepage, promote it in newsletters, or share it across social channels.

Real-time insights make it easier to react quickly and amplify stories that resonate with readers.

Connect content to subscriptions and revenue (codeless)

For many publishers, subscriptions, memberships, and newsletters are essential sources of revenue. For instance, this is a common model on Substack these days.

Knowing which stories contribute to these outcomes helps publishers. Plausible allows you to track meaningful goals such as:

• newsletter signups
• subscription conversions
• clicks on key calls to action

...and tie any goal to revenue so you can track it right within one dashboard while tying it back to traffic sources, top content, geographies, etc.

You even have options like automatic and codeless form submissions tracking for tracking newsletter signups and codeless pageview goals where you can track a /thank-you or /subscription-confirmed page for instance.

You can even weave multiple goals into a funnel to track user journeys and dropoffs.

Track monetization metrics and ad engagement

Understanding which pages generate strong engagement can help you optimize ad placement and content strategy.

You can track custom events (with revenue tracking) and custom properties such as ad clicks or affiliate link interactions to better understand which content contributes most to revenue.

For example, you may want to measure how often readers click ads or affiliate links inside articles.

You could track this as a custom event such as “Affiliate link click” or “Ad click”. Each time a reader clicks one of these links, the event is triggered. You can then attach custom properties to add more context about the interaction, such as the:

• Link type (affiliate link, sponsor link, or internal promotion) to see
• Placement (sidebar, inline within the article, or end-of-article section) to see which placements drive the most ad engagement

...etc.

Another popular use case for custom properties is tracking additional context about your individual pages, such as:

• Post author to see which of the authors perform best and so on
• Category or section (e.g. News, Opinion, Guides) to see what drives the most traffic or conversions
• Content type (article, review, tutorial)

and so on.

In Plausible, these events appear in your Events report, where you can filter and break down the data using those properties.

A/B test headlines and images

Headlines, images, and article presentation often determine whether readers click and continue reading.

It is easy to experiment with different site elements through simple A/B tests in Plausible. You can compare different headlines or images and quickly see which version resonates more with your audience.

Over time, these small improvements can significantly increase engagement across your digital publication.

Easy to integrate with your publishing platform

Plausible can be added to any website with a simple script, and it works smoothly with most publishing platforms and CMS tools.

Many publishers run their sites on platforms such as WordPress, Ghost, Drupal, or custom CMS setups. Plausible can be integrated into these systems in just a few minutes.

Once installed, Plausible immediately starts collecting privacy-friendly analytics data without requiring cookies or complex configuration.

You can find detailed setup guides for many popular platforms. And there’s a specific plug-and-play plugin for WordPress as well.

Use Plausible to refine your editorial strategy

Analytics becomes most useful when it helps inform what you publish next. By reviewing which topics resonate, which articles attract readers, and which stories drive subscriptions, publishers can gradually refine their editorial strategy.

Test Plausible Analytics alongside GA

Register for a free 30-day trial account to test Plausible Analytics on your site. It’s so lightweight that you can run it alongside Google Analytics without any impact on your site loading time.

The 30 days of the free trial should give you enough time to explore Plausible Analytics and figure out how it fits with your needs and your workflow compared to Google Analytics.

You can even bring your old Google Analytics stats to Plausible with our Google Analytics importer.