Clicky Analytics Alternative: What to Move To and Why
Clicky built its reputation on live visitor data long before anyone else cared. Here is where it still wins, and what to move to if you have outgrown it.
The DevDome team builds lightweight, performance-first WordPress plugins and free tools for site owners, founders and marketers. We write about the exact problems our plugins solve, in plain language for people who run real sites.
DevDome makes lightweight WordPress plugins (analytics, bot protection, affiliate and redirect tooling) and free browser tools. We write about the exact problems those products solve, on the same sites we run ourselves.
Technical claims are checked against primary sources: official product and vendor documentation, HTTP and search-engine standards, WordPress and Amazon documentation, and our own hands-on tests on real sites. Where a post relies on a statistic or a competitor fact, it links the source. When we cannot verify a claim, we soften or remove it rather than guess.
Many posts touch problems our plugins address. We disclose that near the recommendation, not only in the footer, and we describe what a product does rather than promising an outcome.
Clicky built its reputation on live visitor data long before anyone else cared. Here is where it still wins, and what to move to if you have outgrown it.
A rotating redirect is the simplest possible split test: two real pages, one entry link, an even split. Here is how to run one without hurting your SEO.
A spreadsheet is a genuinely good starting point and a bad ending point. Here is what each approach does well, and the moment the trade flips.
Crawl budget is one of the most over-applied SEO concepts. Here is who it genuinely affects, and the bot problem people mistake it for.
Pretty Links is a capable plugin with a real free tier. Here is an honest look at where it fits, where it does not, and what to move to if you outgrow it.
Search Console, your analytics and your server logs will report three different numbers for the same week. All three can be right. Here is how to read them.
You do not need to identify anyone to know which campaign worked. Here is how to measure campaigns with tagged links and server-side counting instead of cookies.
Most redirect problems come from a handful of repeated mistakes. Here is the checklist, ordered by how much damage each item prevents.
A footer line is not a disclosure. Here is what regulators and affiliate programs actually ask for, in plain terms, and the placements that keep failing.
Free covers several very different arrangements. Here is what each kind of free analytics is really charging you, so you can pick the trade you are happy with.
Every link you publish starts a slow clock. Here is what the research says about how fast links die, and how to find the dead ones on your own site.
Most sites collect far more about their visitors than they will ever use. Here is a shorter list that answers the same questions with less to protect.
If a fifth of your readers are abroad, a fifth of your buying intent currently earns nothing. Here is the three step fix, in the order that actually works.
The phrase covers several different setups that get sold as one thing. Here is what actually moves to the server, and which part of it helps a small site.
Industry fraud numbers are enormous and mostly about somebody else's problem. Here is the part that actually reaches a WordPress site, and how to measure it.
A short link on your own domain is easier to say out loud, survives a destination change, and counts its own clicks. Here is the setup and the naming discipline.
Showing different content by country is powerful for affiliate links and dangerous for indexable pages. Here is which parts of a page are safe to vary.
A traffic graph that falls off a cliff has about six likely causes. Checking them in the right order finds the answer fast and stops you panicking about the wrong one.
Redirect checkers give you a list of hops and status codes. Here is how to read that list, and the four patterns in it that are quietly costing you.
A dashboard full of metrics is not the same as knowing how your site is doing. Here are six numbers worth checking, and three famous ones worth skipping.
A product box converts better than a bare link, and breaks in more ways. Here is what Amazon's rules allow, what goes stale, and how to keep both under control.
The phrase turns up in every analytics pitch and rarely gets explained. Here is what first party actually means, and the three places the difference shows up.
A broken affiliate link does not announce itself. It just stops earning, and the reader who clicked it goes somewhere else to buy. Here is how to catch them.
Tracking scripts are the most commonly installed third party code on the web, and the most commonly ignored in performance audits. Here is how to see what yours costs.
Black Friday, Prime Day, back to school: the offer changes but your posts should not. Here is the setup that turns a campaign swap into one edit instead of forty.
Anything can claim to be Googlebot in a user agent string. Here is the one check Google publishes for telling the real crawler from the impostors, in plain English.
Bots click affiliate links. They pad your click totals, flatten your conversion rate, and hide which placements actually earn. Here is how to tell a forged click from a real one.
One pattern rule can retire a thousand old URLs, or take your whole site with it. Here is how to write a regex redirect that does only what you meant it to do.
The GDPR is about personal data, not about the act of counting visits. Here is what that means for your WordPress traffic reports, and where the cookie banner rules sit.
A QR code is only a picture of a URL. Put a short link you control inside it and you can change the destination later, count every scan, and see which printed placement worked.
Typing a price into a post feels harmless, and it breaks Amazon's rules. Here is where price data must come from, how fresh it has to be, and what to do instead.
You cannot stop every scraper, but you can make your site expensive to copy and easy to defend. Here is the order that actually works, starting with seeing them.
An empty Realtime report is rarely a Google problem. Here are the four causes that explain almost every case, in the order that takes the least time to check.
One link, two destinations, decided by the visitor's device. Here is how to set that up in WordPress, which redirect type to use, and how to stay on the right side of Google.
A suspension notice is not the end, but arguing is. Here is how to read the notice, fix the cause first, write the appeal, and keep your links earning while you wait.
Cloudflare's free bot toggle is genuinely useful and genuinely limited. Here is an honest look at what it stops, what it never tells you, and where it leaves a gap.
Most broken affiliate links never return a 404, which is why link checkers miss them. Here is the full process: inventory, test, prioritize by clicks, rescue, and automate.
Most bot advice starts with blocking, which is the step most likely to hurt you. Here is the order we use on our own sites: measure, harden, filter, and leave good crawlers alone.
On one small site we run, automated hits outnumbered humans by more than two hundred to one. Here is who is crawling, what it does to your stats, and what blocking really involves.
The hard part of a migration is not the plugin, it is the list. Here is how to build a URL map, turn it into working rules, and prove nothing was left behind.
A large share of what your analytics calls visitors arrives from hosting providers rather than homes and phones. Here is what that traffic is, measured on real sites.
Cloaking is routine for most affiliate programs and risky for this one. Here is the clause that matters, what it actually forbids, and what to do with your Amazon links instead.
WordPress ships with no live visitor view, so the people reading your site right now are invisible by default. Here is how to watch them arrive, page by page.
Two rel attributes do almost the same job, and Google now prefers one of them. Here is what each means, which belongs on an affiliate link, and the cost of using neither.
Every click that leaves your site is invisible to WordPress by default. Here are three ways to record those clicks, and how much of the truth each one actually captures.
The slash at the end of a URL is not decoration. Everywhere except the root of your domain it makes a different address, and serving both is the thing that hurts.
UTM tags are five short labels you add to a link so your analytics knows where a visitor came from. Here is how to use them without wrecking your own data.
Neither version of your domain ranks better. What hurts is serving both at once. Here is how to check which one you use and how to redirect the other properly.
Amazon gives you a 24-hour window, and three ordinary visitor actions can close it sooner. Here is what the rules actually say and where your real leverage is.
Fake referrers pad your traffic and skew every report that uses it. Here is why they exist, how to recognize them, and why filtering beats blocking every time.
A redirect loop means two rules keep handing the visitor back and forth. There are only a handful of likely culprits, and a simple order for ruling them out.
A high bounce rate is not always a problem, and sometimes it is not even real. Here is what the number measures, what inflates it, and when to leave it alone.
OneLink runs as a script in your visitor's browser, which gives it several ways to fail silently. Here are the common causes, in the order worth checking.
The banner is not about analytics. It is about what your site stores on a visitor's device. Change that and the analytics reason for a banner can disappear.
Cookieless analytics counts your traffic without writing anything to a visitor's browser. Here is how that works, what it cannot tell you, and what it buys you.
Editing htaccess is the fastest way to redirect and the easiest way to take your site offline. Here is the real trade-off, and when each approach is the right call.
Jetpack Stats is a solid free view counter for a personal blog. DevDome answers the harder questions: how much of that traffic was human, and which clicks survived.
Lasso does display and link management well. If most of your income is Amazon, the deciding features are different ones. Here is how to compare on what earns.
AAWP builds the best-looking Amazon boxes on WordPress, and it needs API keys to do it. Here is when that dependency becomes a problem, and what to use instead.
Matomo gives you every report and full data ownership, if you maintain it. DevDome gives you fewer numbers, no server to run, and a visible split between humans and bots.
Both are hosted, cookieless and banner-free by design. The split is Fathom's polished simplicity against DevDome's WordPress-native clicks and visible bot reporting.
Both are cookieless and skip the consent banner. The real differences are open source versus WordPress-native, and how each one handles bots and blocked clicks.
Redirection is a good free plugin, so most people who look for a replacement have one specific complaint. Here is how to tell if switching will actually fix it.
Two of these tools cloak and track links. The third keeps Amazon clicks earning. Here is what each one actually solves, and which gap is costing you money.
GA4 is free at any scale and plugs into Google Ads. DevDome is simpler, cookieless by default, and separates humans from bots. Here is where each one actually wins.
Four redirect plugins, four different priorities. Here is what each one does well, where each one falls short, and the single feature that usually settles the choice.
Most lost affiliate income comes from a few avoidable mistakes, not bad content. Here are seven that quietly drain commissions, and the fix for each.
Products sell out and listings disappear constantly. When yours do, your clicks hit a wall. Here is the real cost and how to send those clicks somewhere that still earns.
Pick the wrong redirect type and you can lose rankings or freeze a temporary change in place. Here is the plain-English difference and when each one fits.
A single missing tag turns a commission into a free referral for Amazon. Here is how links lose their tags and how to keep every one of them earning.
A growing share of visitors block the scripts your analytics rely on, so their clicks never register. Here is why, and how to count them anyway.
A large part of your audience may be abroad, clicking links that pay you nothing. Here is how Amazon's regional programs work and how to capture those lost sales.
Both tools route international clicks to a visitor's local Amazon, but they work differently. Here is how OneLink and a geo plugin compare on earnings and control.
Telling a bot from a real reader comes down to a handful of signals. Here is what to look for and how to stop counting machines as your audience.
If your traffic looks great but conversions do not, the gap is usually bots. Here is what inflates the count and how to measure real people instead.
All six avoid the cookie banner. They differ in where tracking runs and how they handle bots. Here is the field compared, with our criteria and our reasoning shown.
Roughly half of all web traffic is automated, and a big slice is hostile. Here is what the data says and how much of it is hiding in your analytics.
You change a redirect, but visitors still land on the old target. Caching is usually the culprit. Here is why it happens and how to keep redirects working.
Responsive design covers most cases, but sometimes a device genuinely needs its own destination. Here is when device targeting helps and how to do it without hurting SEO.
Geo-targeted redirects send each visitor to the page that fits their country. Here is how they work, the best uses, and how to avoid the common SEO mistakes.
One link, several destinations. Link rotation lets you split-test offers or share traffic without changing your content. Here is how it works and when to use it.