My latest plugin for WordPress lets you easily add click-through link tracking to all of your WordPress website’s feeds. There’s no configuration required. After installing and activating the plugin, subscribers and syndicated platforms will appear in Google Analytics as originating from “Feeds” rather than unidentified “Direct” traffic.
You can download the UTM for Feeds plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
The plugin will append two query parameters to all self-referencing links (links to the post itself) in your WordPress site’s feeds. These parameters are utm_medium and utm_source and are used by Google Analytics (and other analytics platforms) to identify where visitors are coming to your website from.
Here are two full examples of rewritten links to blog posts as they may appear in your feed with added tracking parameters:
https://example.com/?p=50&utm_medium=Feed&utm_source=Syndication
https://example.com/2017/post-name/?utm_medium=Feed&utm_source=SyndicationThe query parameters in the feed can be customized as needed by appending them to the feed request itself. This can be very useful when you syndicate your feeds with services like Hootsuite, Flipboard, Apple News, or MailChimp. Here’s an example:
https://example.com/feed?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=NewsletterLikewise, you can disable tracking if you need a “clean” feed by setting the two parameters to 0. This is useful when you want to submit your feed as a sitemap to a search engine or have other special needs.
The plugin fully supports Do Not Track (DNT) requests, an option for privacy conscious subscribers who don’t want to be tracked. As far as I know, there are currently only two feed readers that support requesting feeds with DNT as of . More as a joke than anything else, the plugin also supports opt-in to more extensive tracking using the Do-Track preference (DNT: 0.)
The plugin does, of course, properly handles caching of DNT request header variance.
You can download the UTM for Feeds plugin for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory. You’ll also find the freely available source code there. Note that the plugin may not be compatbile with your version of WordPress.
Please note that you must install the Google Analytics tracking code in your WordPress theme by following the instructions provided on the Google Analytics website. This plugin will not work properly if you haven’t installed the Google Analytics script correctly.