RockHeron

No. Everything on the dashboard except the GA4, Search Console and Ads cards comes from your own site.

The tracking script is roughly 6 KB, loads in the footer, and sends one small beacon per page view. Reports read a pre built daily table rather than scanning raw rows.

Yes. Page views are counted in the browser, so a cached page is still recorded.

The plugin starts recording the day you install it. Open Settings, Import history from Google Analytics, and it fills the earlier months from your GA4 property. Imported days are dashed on the chart because Google counts sessions slightly differently.

Import your Search Console history instead. Settings, Import search history from Search Console, upload the export file. It needs no Google connection, because the site owner always has their own Search Console property even when the analytics account belongs to a previous agency.

Open RockHeron, Tracked elements. Give it a name, paste the button's CSS selector, and tick "count this as a goal" if it matters commercially.

Nothing here needs an account anywhere unless you choose to connect Google.

1. Activate the plugin and open RockHeron. Recording starts immediately and the first visits appear within a minute. There is nothing to switch on.
2. Dashboard is traffic: sessions, daily visitors, page views, goal completions and conversion rate, each against the previous period, with cards for where visits came from, top pages and traffic over time.
3. Leads is the point of the plugin: every form submission and WooCommerce order with the campaign that introduced the person, read as first touch. A result nobody could attribute is listed as Not known rather than dropped, so these totals never quietly disagree with your form plugin.
4. Tracked elements counts anything you name with a CSS selector: a quote button, a telephone link, a PDF download. Tick "count this as a goal" and it feeds the conversion figures.
5. Settings holds Google, privacy, retention and the Google tag.

You do not need Google at all. The plugin records visits and leads from your own site, in your own database. Connecting Google only adds Google's own numbers beside yours. Three independent things:

• Google Analytics 4 reporting. Settings, Google data. Either install Site Kit by Google and RockHeron uses its connection, or connect directly. A direct connection needs a Google Cloud project with the Analytics Data API enabled and an OAuth client of type Web application, whose Client ID and Client secret you paste into Settings. The scope is analytics.readonly, read only: nothing is written back and no visitor data is sent.
• Google Ads. Only if you switch it on, adding the adwords scope to the same connection so spend and clicks can be read.
• Search Console history. No API, no credentials. Export the Performance report from Search Console and upload the zip, or the CSVs inside it, in Settings.

The paid version adds a Campaigns screen that takes a CSV of what each platform claimed, and shows it beside what this plugin recorded. The column format is documented at https://rockheron.com/documentation/

The Report screen builds a report over any period from the cards you choose, and it is a printable page: your browser's print dialog saves it as a PDF, and the caveats under each figure are carried into the file rather than left behind on the screen. That is true of every edition.

Settings, Privacy. Consent mode is off by default, which records every visit. The other three modes are:

• WP Consent API, for any consent plugin implementing it. Statistics consent is required before anything is recorded.
• CookiePile, read directly.
• A cookie you name: give the cookie name and the value meaning consent.

What is kept about a lead is the campaign and a pointer to the form plugin's own entry. No name, no email address, no telephone number, and no advertising click identifier. Your form plugin already holds the submission, and a second copy of every lead on your site is a duty rather than a feature. Three retention settings, all in Settings, Stored data:

• Attribution window, default 30 days. How long the first touch campaign is remembered in one first party cookie. 1 to 365.
• Raw events, default 90 days. Individual page views are pruned nightly after this; the daily totals they roll up into are kept.
• Leads, default 400 days. 30 to 3650.

Lists like top pages, referrers, campaigns and landing pages are rolled up once a day. Each day keeps its busiest rows by name and sums the rest into a single "everything else" figure, so the stored rows account for the whole day however long the list. The totals are right either way. A cap changes only how much of the long tail is broken out by name: a page ranking below it every day is still counted, inside that one figure rather than under its own address. Defaults are 200 rows a day for pages and landing paths, 100 for referrers, campaigns, outbound links and searches, and 50 for lists that cannot produce more anyway, such as device, browser and country. Settings, Stored data has one field, "Rows kept per list, per day", setting a single number for every list; zero, the default, leaves each on its own. The rockheron_dim_limit filter takes ( $limit, $dim ) to raise one list without the rest. Each extra row is kept for good, since the daily totals outlive the raw events behind them, so raising this on a site with thousands of URLs costs table rows for every day the site runs.

• The dashboard is empty. The plugin knows only what it has recorded since activation; it cannot see the past. Check you are not logged in as an administrator or editor: those roles are excluded by default, in Settings, What to record, so browsing your own site while logged in deliberately records nothing.
• Nothing appears on a cached site. Recording runs in the browser and does not need an uncached page. If you see nothing, check your caching or optimization plugin is not deferring or stripping the script.
• Leads are missing. The Leads screen lists the form plugins it can see. If yours is absent it is not supported yet. If it is listed but entries are not arriving, confirm the form completes: a submission that fails validation is not a lead.
• Google numbers will not load. Reconnect in Settings, Google data. An expired or revoked connection reports the error it received rather than showing zero, because zero is a real figure and a broken connection must not produce one.
• Figures disagree with Google. They will, always, and neither is wrong. Google counts sessions its own way and loses what consent and ad blockers take; this plugin counts what reached your database. Both are shown, never reconciled.
• A PDF will not download. The report page prints to PDF from any browser in every edition, and a paid edition renders the file on the server as well. Where that cannot run, the screen says so and falls back to the printable page. See "Reports, and how a PDF is made" above for what the server needs and what is capped.

• Documentation: https://rockheron.com/documentation/
• Support: https://rockheron.com/support/
• Email: support@rockheron.com