Tracking and privacy¶

Tracking and privacy settings control what BimBeau Privacy Analytics measures, how visits are grouped, how URLs are stored, how long analytics data is kept, which roles and pages are excluded, and whether debug logging is enabled.

Where to find tracking and privacy settings¶

In the WordPress admin area, open Statistics → Settings → Tracking & privacy.

Essential tracking¶

Essential tracking is the baseline measurement layer. It is designed for limited audience statistics and core aggregate reports.

The settings interface presents essential stats as the baseline analytics layer in the plugin's tracking model. Essential data includes items such as:

• page views;
• visit origin;
• device type;
• reliable counting.

Advanced tracking¶

Advanced tracking adds detailed visit insights when it is enabled and allowed by your consent workflow.

Depending on your plan, configuration, and consent setup, advanced data can include items such as:

• visit journey;
• engagement time;
• display format;
• interactions;
• location.

Use Enable advanced stats after consent only when your consent workflow is configured to block or release advanced analytics at the right time.

Consent behavior¶

When advanced stats are enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics exposes the advanced tracker as a CMP-targetable script.

Your CMP must block or release the BimBeau Privacy Analytics advanced tracker according to the visitor's relevant consent. BimBeau Privacy Analytics can expose the script, script ID, and WordPress handle used for CMP configuration in the settings interface.

Respect DNT / GPC¶

Respect DNT / GPC is enabled by default. While it is enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics stops measurement when the visitor's browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.

Use this option when your privacy approach treats those browser signals as opt-out signals for analytics measurement.

Visitor activity window¶

The Visitor activity window controls how long activity from the same visitor can remain grouped into one temporary visitor row.

Essential tracking can store this first-party technical identifier in the visitor's browser through localStorage or sessionStorage. The identifier is used only to group activity into a bounded visitor row, prevent technical duplicate transport hits, and produce aggregated or anonymized audience statistics. It is not used for advertising, cross-site tracking, or visitor profiling.

The default value is 1800 seconds, or 30 minutes. The settings interface accepts values from 300 to 86400 seconds:

• shorter windows can split activity into more visitor rows;
• longer windows can keep more continuous activity in one visitor row.

Expired browser storage entries are removed automatically when the tracker runs or reads the stored state again.

URLs and campaigns¶

The URLs & campaigns section controls how query parameters are handled in tracked URLs.

Use the allowlist for campaign parameters that should remain available for attribution, such as UTM keys, while removing unnecessary or sensitive query parameters.

New installs include these common marketing attribution keys in the default allowlist:

• utm_source;
• utm_medium;
• utm_campaign;
• gclid;
• gbraid;
• wbraid;
• msclkid.

Existing installs with a missing or empty allowlist are backfilled once during activation or upgrade checks. If you already configured a non-empty custom allowlist, BimBeau Privacy Analytics preserves it.

Data retention¶

The Data retention section lets you set retention periods for temporary detailed events, report details, and long-term totals, and choose how often automated cleanup runs.

The two retention lists offer preset durations (for example 30, 90, 365 or 730 days). The cleanup frequency list offers 1, 7, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 90 days.

Retention cleanup permanently removes data older than the selected window. See Data retention for a detailed explanation.

Exclusions by role¶

The Exclusions section lets you select WordPress roles to exclude from tracking.

Select the roles that represent internal users whose activity should not appear in analytics. Selecting all roles ignores all logged-in users.

The exclusion applies to page views and to enriched activity (active time) of logged-in users with an excluded role. It is decided when the page is displayed, so it relies on the fact that page caches do not serve pages generated for logged-in users to other visitors, which is the default behavior of WordPress cache plugins.

Excluded paths¶

The Exclusions section also contains the Excluded paths field. List the pages that must not be counted, one page path per line:

/contact
/thank-you

• You can also separate paths with commas on one line: /contact, /thank-you. A comma always separates two paths, so a page path that contains a comma cannot be entered in this field.
• Enter the path, not the full address: /contact, not https://example.com/contact or example.com/contact. A full address, with or without https://, is refused when you save. A file name such as page.html is accepted.
• Letter case, a trailing slash and the query string are ignored: /contact also excludes /Contact/ and /contact?utm_source=newsletter.
• There is no wildcard and no prefix matching: /contact does not exclude /contact/team or /contact-us. List each page you want to exclude.
• For an address with accented or non-Latin characters, enter the encoded form that your browser gives when you copy the address, for example /caf%C3%A9 for /café.
• After the save, the field shows the list as it is stored: lowercase, with one leading slash, without a trailing slash and without duplicates.

Listed pages stop being counted when you save: they add no page view, visitor, real-time entry, time on page, or entry or exit page. A visit that starts on an excluded page and continues on another page is counted from that other page, as a direct visit. 404 and search tracking also skip excluded paths.

Debug mode¶

The Debug section includes Debug mode.

When enabled, BimBeau Privacy Analytics writes detailed diagnostic logs for troubleshooting tracking events, real-time visitor detection, and REST payloads. Logs can appear in the browser console and in wp-content/debug.log when WordPress debug logging is enabled.

Related pages¶

• Essential vs advanced tracking
• Consent and CMP setup
• Data retention