The first tab of Vireo Analytics, Overview. Every card follows the date range and filters at the top of the page.
The summary line
The page opens with one sentence saying what matters most in the range, such as “Pageviews are up 27%”, with the post behind most of the rise underneath. With “Compare” on, it’s labelled “Compared with the period before.”, or, when the range includes today, “Compared with the period before, up to the same time of day.”
This week
On the default view, a “This week” card lists up to three things worth knowing about the last seven full days. The kinds it looks for:
- the page that gained the most views on the week before
- a site sending visitors for the first time
- your best week so far
- the site or a post passing a round number of views
- the busiest day
A quiet week shows no card. The same highlights go into the weekly email.
The totals
- Pageviews: every view in the range.
- Visitors: unique per day. Over a longer range it’s labelled “daily uniques, summed”, because each day’s visitors are added together. Why.
- Average daily traffic: pageviews divided by days, with a small chart of the range.
- Time on page: the average active time per view, such as “1m 05s”. Hover the line under it for how many views reported a time.
- Bounce rate: the share of visitors who viewed one page.
With comparison on, each total carries its change on the compared period, and the compared figure and its dates sit under it. “Compare with” chooses “Previous period” or “Same period last year”. When the compared dates come from imported history, a note under the totals names the tool the figures were imported from. Bounce rate’s change is in percentage points, and a rise shows as the bad direction.
Time on page and bounce rate are measured for the whole site, not per country, device or source. While one of those filters is on, both cards show a dash and say “not split by filters”. They also show a dash when there’s nothing to measure, with a line saying why and from which day it counts. Time on page says “no views timed yet” until the first reader moves on, “no views timed in this range” when the range has none, or “timed from” a date when the range ends before timing began. Bounce rate says “starts counting” followed by a date on the day you update, or “counted from” a date when the range ends before counting began. How both are measured.
Bots kept out
Under the totals, one line says how many requests Vireo kept out of the numbers and what share of all requests that was. Open “What was filtered and why” for the split by kind of bot, and click “Got it” to fold the explanation away. See Bot filtering.
Traffic chart
Daily pageviews for the range, at the top of the tab. Switch between Pageviews, Visitors and Both. When the range is two days or shorter, you can switch from Day to Hour. With comparison on, the compared period is drawn as a continuous line, labelled “Prior period”, or “Prior period, whole days” when the range includes today. Under a page, referrer or other filter the hourly view isn’t available and the chart shows days.
A day with a note gets a pin on the chart.
What changed
“What changed” lists the pages and sources that Gained and Lost the most against the previous period, so a rise or a drop comes with its cause. The free plugin lists the three biggest movers each way. With Vireo Pro it finds up to ten: the first five show, and “Show all pages” or “Show all sources” opens the rest.
Below them, warnings appear when something is wrong rather than different: recording has stopped, countries aren’t being resolved, missing pages are being hit far more than usual, or (with comparison off) traffic looks unusual. Warnings with a fix carry a “Fix this” link.
Top pages, referrers and countries
Three cards side by side. Top pages and Where visitors come from have their own pages. Top countries switches between a Map and a Table; see Countries and devices. When only part of the range has country data, such as imported history, the card says “Country known for N% of visitors.” instead of ranking the rest as Unknown.
Technology
Device types, browsers and operating systems for the range, by visitors.
WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight
Two more cards appear above Notes when the plugin they report on is active. Neither shows on a connected site’s numbers, and each stays hidden until there’s something to count in the range.
“Aggregated content” is for sites running WP RSS Aggregator 5:
- Views of imported posts: visits to feed items WP RSS Aggregator imported as posts, and the share of all pageviews they make up.
- Clicks through to the original articles: readers who followed an item to the site it came from.
- A table of up to ten Feed sources, with “Views here” and “Clicks out” for each.
“Instagram feeds” is for sites running Spotlight. It counts:
- posts opened from a feed
- links followed from an opened post
- Follow clicks
- Load more clicks
Then it lists up to ten pages with a feed, with posts opened and Follow clicks on each.
Clicks are counted only from the day Vireo began recording them, so days before that show none. To stop counting them, a developer can use the vireo_track_wpra and vireo_track_spotlight filters.
Print or save as PDF
“Print / Save as PDF” at the top of the tab prints the report without the menus and controls, with the site and the print date on the page. Choose “Save as PDF” in the browser’s print dialog for a file. A post’s and a referrer’s own screen have the same button.
Notes
At the foot of the tab, Notes pins a line of text to a date, so a spike still has its explanation weeks later. Pick the Date, type what happened (“Newsletter went out”) under “What happened”, and click “Add note”. Notes in the range are listed there; remove one with the button beside it.
Anyone who can edit other people’s posts can add notes, which by default means editors and administrators. A developer can change who may with the vireo_annotation_capability filter.