Track Author Stats (# of pageviews)

Hi there, I am looking for the same thing. Any luck finding a solution since you posted this question?

Thanks,
Ross

Nope, nothing. I think that something could be done with Google Analytics if you are handy with their custom filters but I can’t figure it out. It baffles me that there’s nothing like this for WP.

I can’t find anything either. Been searching for a long time. This is a very powerful feature that could really legitimize WordPress as a professional content system. I’m also really surprised one doesn’t exist as well.

UPDATE:

I’ve found these two articles: https://www.wheresitworking.com/2010/02/08/tracking-authors-in-wordpress-with-google-analytics-event-tracking/

https://www.marketingtechblog.com/wordpress/tracking-multiple-authors-google-analytics-wordpress/

I just tried the first one and I’ll have to wait and see if it works.

610m, Did that work for you? I also can’t believe there’s no way for WordPress stats to do this…

i think piwik will work with some hacks. i am trying and i will post it if I get the answer.

The Google Analytics event tracking method is an elegant way to solve this.

For a single post, find out the author name (e.g via get_the_author_meta(‘user_nicename’), store it in $author_name , and use something like:

pageTracker._trackEvent('author', 'single view', '<?php echo $author_name; ?>');

or in the loop, directly:

pageTracker._trackEvent('author', 'article shown in loop', '<?php the_author_meta('user_nicename'); ?>');

I’m also really keen on this. How does it work if the analytics tag is installed in the footer, and will also display on any of the other pages?

This may be a bit advanced for some, but just a warning: the problem with Google Analytics Event Tracking is that it is not a completely accurate way for tracking unique pageviews, as it wasn’t built for that (it was built to record visitor’s actions such as hitting play on a video or downloading a file). So the code above, while semi-helpful, is not an entirely accurate way of recording unique pageviews and probably should not be used to determine pay for bloggers.

The reason Event Tracking is not accurate for tracking pageviews using the code above is that if a visitor views multiple unique webpages in WordPress’s “Single Page” view (single.php), Event Tracking will only count those views as 1 unique event (or 1 pageview). For example, say a visitor reads one article, then reads 10 more on your site, Google Event Tracking will record all those views as 1 unique event, and also record it as 11 total events. (You’ll have to read up on Google Event Tracking to know the difference between Total and Unique Events.)

Why does it do that? Because “Single Page” (single.php) is the trigger, not individual post titles. So even though a user is browsing multiple articles on the site, Google Analytics Events Tracking only counts it as one unique event of accessing the single.php on your site during the visitor’s session. Think of it the same way regular ol’ Google Analytics counts unique pageviews, except instead of a tracking a specific URL, single.php is the webpage, and the posts are just the dynamic content loading inside of it.

So to reiterate, no matter if a user reads 1 article or 11 different articles in “Single Page” view, it will only be counted as 1 unique event during a user’s session on your site,

So Total Events seems more accurate right? Wrong. Because if that same user views the same article 11 times (in other words, hits refresh 11 times), it will count as 11 total events, also ruining your pageview counting.

So unique events does not equal unique pageviews. And that’s too bad, because unique pageviews would be one accurate way to measure individual author success on a multi-author blog.

Maybe there is a way to do use Google Analytics Event Tracking more accurately than the above code example, I’m still looking for it though.

So Total Events seems more accurate right? Wrong. Because if that same user views the same article 11 times (in other words, hits refresh 11 times), it will count as 11 total events, also ruining your pageview counting.

How would you track the “Total Events” if you wanted to? I understand the problem you point out with doing this however I’m not concerned with differentiating between total pageviews and unique pageviews.

How would you track the “Total Events” if you wanted to?

Google Analytics does this automatically. It does both Total Events and Unique Events.