How to Set Up Google Analytics on WordPress Multisite Network

Looking for an easy way to set up Google Analytics on WordPress multisite network? MonsterInsights makes it easier than ever to set up Google Analytics on all of your sites.

It helps you save time and you don’t have to touch a single line of code or have to hire a developer to get the job done.

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up Google Analytics on your multisite network. Let’s begin…

The Problem With Google Analytics and WordPress Multisite

WordPress multisite can save you a lot of time in managing multiple websites, but it also causes some unique problems – one of which is installing analytics.

MonsterInsights is the best WordPress Analytics plugin. Get it for free!

Most Google Analytics plugins for WordPress lack support for multisite. That means that you need to go through each individual site in your network and add your Google Analytics tracking code one by one.

That’s not such a big deal if you only have a few sites, but what about networks with dozens or even hundreds of sites?

With MonsterInsights, all you need to do is add your Google Analytics code to your main site, and it works across your entire network. No technical skills are required, and you never even have to copy and paste your tracking code.

Once you connect your Google Analytics account using MonsterInsights, the tracking code is automatically added for you behind the scenes.

We’ll walk you through the entire process of setting up your Google Analytics account and installing and activating MonsterInsights.

Step 1: Sign Up for Google Analytics

The first thing you’ll need to do is log in or sign up for a Google account.

To get started, open the Google Analytics website and click the Sign In link in the top right corner of the page.

Sign in to Analytics

On the next page, you can log in to your existing Google account if you have one, or click the Create account link to create a new Google account.

Sign In to Your Google Account for Analytics

After you’re logged in, click the Start measuring button.

start measuring

On the next screen, Google Analytics will ask for your account details. Start by entering an account name. Then click all the checkboxes for Account Data Sharing Settings and hit Next.

enter account details and check sharing options

After that, give a name to your property (website), select a reporting time zone, and currency.

Once you’ve entered these details, click on Show advanced options.

click show advanced options

Then click on the switch to enable Create a Universal Analytics property.

enable create universal analytics property

Now enter your parent website’s URL from where you wish to control all other sites on the multisite network. And then select the Create a Universal Analytics property only option and click Next.

select create a universal analytics property only

You’ll now have to select a category for your business, your business size, and choose how do you want to use Google Analytics with your business.

business information

Next, click Create.

Now a new window will popup where you’ll be asked to review and accept the Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement.

Check all the boxes and then click I Accept at the bottom.

Accept Analytics Terms of Service and GDPR

That’s it! You’re now signed up for Google Analytics.

But Analytics will ask you to add a tracking code to your WordPress websites. You can leave this for now, as we’ll show you how to do that in step 4.

Step 2: Add More Sites to Google Analytics

To add more sites to your Analytics profile, click the Admin tab in the left taskbar.

click admin

Now click Create Account at the top.

create new account

Then follow the same process as shown in the first step and enter your website information.

Repeat these steps until you finished adding all your sites to Google Analytics.

Once you’ve added all the websites from your WordPress multisite network, let’s see how you can add Google Analytics tracking code to all of them at once.

Step 3: Install and Activate MonsterInsights for Your Network

MonsterInsights makes it super easy to connect all your sites with Google Analytics. Best of all, you don’t have to mess with tracking codes to set up Analytics.

Do note that to set up Google Analytics using MonsterInsights on your multisite network, you will need its Agency plan.

You can get started by downloading the MonsterInsights plugin. To do that, you’ll need to login to your MonsterInsights account and then go to the Downloads tab to download the plugin zip file.

 

download monsterinsights

Once you have the zip file, you can log into the multisite network.

Then navigate to Plugins » Add New and click the Upload Plugin button at the top.

upload plugin

On the next screen, you can click the Choose File button to select the zip file you just downloaded. Then click the Install Now button to upload the file and install the plugin on your site.

install monsterinsights for multisite

Once the plugin has been uploaded and installed, you can click the Network Activate button to activate it on your entire multisite network.

activate monsterinsights for multisite

Step 4: Connect Google Analytics to Your WordPress Multisite Network

After you’ve successfully activated the plugin, you’ll be taken to MonsterInsights welcome screen, where you can click the Launch the Wizard button to get started.

launch monsterInsights setup wizard

Next, choose a category that best describes your network and click Save and Continue.

website category

After that, you’ll have to enter your MonsterInsights License key. You can find the key in your account area under the Downloads tab. Simply copy and paste the key in the wizard.

Then click Connect MonsterInsights.

enter your monsterInsights license key

In the next step, you will have to connect your Google account with MonsterInsights. Make sure to select the account you used in the first step.

select Google account

Now click Allow so MonsterInsights can access your Google account.

give permissions

Next, select the website profile you want to Authenticate with MonsterInsights and click Complete Connection.

select your property

MonsterInsights will now show you some recommended settings such as event tracking, enhanced link attribution, file downloads, affiliate link tracking, and more. Click Save and Continue when you’re satisfied with the settings.

MonsterInsights GA Plugin Recommended Settings -second part

In the next step, you can install MonsterInsights addons and get more insights about your visitors. For instance, with Forms addon, you can track form conversions.

There are many more addons you can choose from and set up tracking that’s not possible by default in Google Analytics. Click Save and Continue when you’re done.

MonsterInsights Plugin Recommended Addons

Now, in the last step, click Finish Setup & Exit Wizard.

finish setup

That’s it! Now you’ve activated MonsterInsights for your WordPress Multi-Site Network.

For any sub-sites that you wish to have their own insights and stats panel in WordPress, you can override the network settings with that subsite settings.

To do so, navigate to that site’s dashboard:

Sub-site Dashboard WP Multi-Site

Then, navigate to Insights » Settings and activate your license key.

Next, if you only want to override the network UA code, or if you want reports on the subsite dashboard you can authenticate with your Google Account on the subsite:

Then, follow the steps to authenticate this sub-site with your Google Analytics Account.

It can take a few hours for Google Analytics to start collecting data.

Once it does, you can go to Insights » Reports to each individual site to see how your site is doing.

Reports in MonsterInsights

We hope this tutorial helped you to set up Google Analytics on WordPress multisite network. You may also want to see our guide on the best WordPress multisite plugins.

If you liked this article, you might find this guide on how to stop tracking logged in users useful. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more Google Analytics tips and tutorials.

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Comments

  1. How would a client on a subsite of the network add their own UA code? The instructions about seem to be for the network administrator, but we would need our clients on subsites to be able to add UA code so they can manage it through their Google accounts. Thank you!

    1. The network panel is for the default for all subsites. On a per subsite basis the UA code can be manually entered or authenticated via the per-subsite settings panel.

  2. Hello, Setting up Multisite and going through the authentication of the GA account on the network settings I was expecting that to authenticate all subsites. Would be nice if the subsites had the ability to use the network authenticated account so you didn’t have to auth for each subsite. And that being said would be nice to have network wide settings for the anonymizeIP, etc so you can set once for the entire network.
    Thank you

    1. Hi there,
      You don’t need to authenticate for each subsite, if you want them to use the same UA code as the one used on the network site. They will automatically default to using that. You only need to authenticate on a subsite if you want it to use a different UA code than the default.

      I’ll log network GA options on our feature request board

  3. With this feature can you see an aggregated report of all the sub sites? I am hoping for a way to see all the analytics of the network in one report.

    1. Hey Brian, thanks for your question! Unfortunately this is something that MonsterInsights cannot do currently. This is already a feature request, so I’ll make sure to add another vote for it.

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