4 sites tracked, real-time dashboards, zero monthly cost
Google Analytics is powerful but overkill for small business sites, and it sends your visitors' data to Google. I needed a lightweight, privacy-respecting visitor tracking system that works across multiple websites and provides the specific metrics I care about: real visitors (not bots), geographic location, traffic sources, and Google Ads click tracking.
I built a custom tracking system using PHP and SQLite. Each site gets a track.php endpoint that records visits with bot detection (user agent regex, known bot IPs, Googlebot CIDR ranges), GeoIP lookup via ip-api.com with 24-hour caching, and rate limiting (1 hit per IP per page per 5 minutes). A visitors.php API serves aggregated data with key authentication. The Nexus dashboard displays all 4 tracked sites on a unified page with Chart.js visualizations, date range filtering, and bot toggle controls.
4 Sites Tracked
FancyPetSalon, JM Field, MySEODesk, and SyncSita all reporting to one dashboard
Zero Cost
No monthly analytics fees. SQLite database, PHP on existing servers
Bot Filtering
Accurate human visitor counts by filtering out Googlebot, Bingbot, and 50+ known crawlers
Real-Time
Live visitor data with geographic mapping, device breakdown, and traffic source analysis
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