Use Google Analytics to Get Detailed Stats About Your Tumblr Blog

Want to find out how many people are visiting your Tumblr blog, and who’s linking to your posts?  Here’s how you can get all the inside info on your Tumblr blog with Google Analytics.

If you’ve migrated from WordPress.com to Tumblr, or used to have a self-hosted WordPress blog with the WordPress.com stats enabled, you may have missed the handy stats gadget on your dashboard.  Perhaps it’s just an ego inflator, but it is nice to see how many people are visiting your site and it can even help focus your posts by seeing which posts are the most popular.

Many professional websites, on the other hand, rely on Google Analytics for free and detailed statistics about their sites.  Tumblr users may not have the easy, integrated WordPress.com stats, but they can use the more advanced Google Analytics directly with their Tumblr blog.  You’ll have to go to the Analytics site to see your blog’s statistics, but you’ll get far more details too.  Here’s how you do it.

Register for Google Analytics

Before you can add Google Analytics to your Tumblr blog, you’ll need to sign up for the Analytics service.  Head over to the Google Analytics site (link below), and click the Sign Up Now link.

Sign in with your Google account when prompted.

Click the Sign Up button again to start registering your site.

Enter your Tumblr blog’s address; you can either enter yourblog.tumblr.com, or if you’veadded a custom domain to your Tumblr, enter that address instead.  Click Continue when you’ve entered all the needed info.

Enter your name and location, and click Continue.

Read over the license agreement, then check the box to agree with the license.  Click Create New Account when you’re finished.

Finally, Google Analytics will show you code to paste into your site.  To add Google Analytics to Tumblr, you’ll usually only need the Tracking ID itself, so you can just select the ID as highlighted below, which should be a number similar to UA-12345678-9.  Copy this, and then proceed to add Analytics to your Tumblr.

Add Google Analytics to Your Tumblr

Most Tumblr themes make it very easy to add Analytics.  Once you’ve copied your Tracking ID number, head over to your Tumblr’s Customize page (link below) or click Customize in your dashboard.

Select the Appearance tab, and find the Google Analytics field.  Paste your code in this text box.

Click Save+ Close on the top right, and now Google Analytics is integrated with your Tumblr blog.  There’s nothing else you need to do!

Add Google Analytics Manually to Your Tumblr Theme

If your Appearance tab doesn’t have a Google Analytics option, don’t despair!  We’ve loaded the Astronaut theme here, which doesn’t include Google Analytics integration in theAppearance tab, so we’ll need to add Analytics to the code.

To do this, open your Theme tab and select Use custom HTML.

Now, go back to the Analytics page and copy all of the code given rather than just your site’s ID.  If you’ve already closed the page with your Analytics code, you can easily find it again by following our directions on How to Find Your Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Once you’ve got the code, head back to your Tumblr Customize page with the Theme tab open to the site’s code.  Press Ctrl+F in your browser, and search for </head>.  Paste your code directly above it.

Click Close and Save, and now Google Analytics is integrated with your Tumblr blog even though it wasn’t included in the theme by default!

View Your Stats

Once everything’s integrated, you can start viewing stats about your site’s traffic.  It may take some time before data’s available, but you’ll usually start seeing stats within a day or so.  Browse to the Analytics page, and click Access Analytics as before.

This time, click your site’s name in the Accounts list to see more info about it, or just glance at the quick visits stats on the front page.

Now click View report on the profile page.

This will give you some nice graphs about your site, including a large, interactive graph of visits over time, as well as smaller sparklines-style graphs of visits, pageviews, average time on site, and more.

Check out the Map Overview to see where your visitors are coming from, or check theContent Overview to see which posts are most popular.  There’s tons here to explore; keep clicking and you’ll get more info about each item.

Another one of the cool features you will like is having your analytics reports sent to your email which is available under Custom Reporting. You can schedule them to arrive daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

You can schedule them to arrive daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly in a variety of file formats. This will help you keep on top of the type of the traffic you’re getting without having to log into the Analytics site.

Conclusion

Although Tumblr doesn’t include built-in stats on your blog’s visits, it’s easy to add Google Analytics and get more stats power than WordPress.com offers.  Even though it seems like a less sophisticated service at first, Tumblr has everything you’d want for a great blogging platform.  Keep blogging, and let Analytics tell you what posts kept your visitors coming back for more!