The Data you get from the Wordpress.com Stats Plugin is Extremely Useful.
But first you need to know how to view and analyze this site analytics and visitor statistics information.
Just login as normal into the Wordpress admin account for your self-hosted site (www.mysite.com/wp-admin). The admin dashboard for your Wordpress site will then be displayed. You then need to login to Wordpress.com via Blog Stats in the menu bar to get you stats or…
Alternatively there is an area in your Wordpress Dashboard that already displays a snapshot of some of the basic stats data for you and you can login from there to get more detail statistical information. Just scroll down to get to this area when you are in the dashboard.
This displays the Top Post, the Most Active Posts and the Top Search Strings that visitors have typed into the search engines to find your Wordpress site.
This all very useful information about your site as it lets you know quickly what the most popular content on your site is and this can help you determine where you might want to focus your marketing efforts to get even more visitors. Looking at both the Searches and the most popular Posts will help you do this.
Click on Blog Stats in your Self-Hosted Admin Dashboard
In the top left corner of your Dashboard you will see the BLOG STATS option. This will appear in slightly different locations as an option depending on your Wordpress Version, either 2.7 and later or an earlier version…
Blog Stats Wordpress 2.7
Blog Stats for Versions before 2.7
Then Login To Your Wordpress.com Account
Anyway when you find the link just click on it and you will be prompted with a Login Screen, so you can login to your Wordpress.com account that is collecting the website statistics for your Wordpress blog or website.
This need to login to Wordpress.com after already having logged into your own self-hosted Wordpress admin account is a little confusing and can seem like an unnecessary extra step to have to take.
But for now this is what you have to do!
Once logged in you will see a single page with several differnet sections displaying different information about your blog stats. This blog statistical information is invaluable when it comes to working out what is going on with your Wordpress website or blog.
Data displayed from the Stats Plugin is as follows:
Page Views Per Day Graph
This shows the daily number of Pages Viewed on your site.
The graph can be shown in three different modes: DAILY, WEEKLY or MONTHLY
This DAILY graph gives you a great idea of how busy your blog has been and lets you see the trend in the number of visitors to your site includeing the busy times and the les busy times. This is essential as it allows you to monitor your blog success at a general level. However, it is important to note that this graph indicates Page Views and not Unique Visitors. Your unique visitor count is a better measure of your blog’s success as these are different people visitong your site. Page views give a less accurate picture of how many people visit your site as a single individual could view 100 pages all on their own!
Look at the WEEKS and MONTHS tabs to get a better feel for general trends on your Wordpress site.
Referrers
Links clicked by your visitors which brought them directly to your site. You get to see the top counts for both today and yesterday.
These represent visitors that come to your Wordpress site by clicking in a link on someone else’s site that links directly to yours. These are therefore not visitors that found your site using a search engine. Again this helps you determine the level of traffic (visitors) that are coming to your sites for other sites and it also therefore shows you which of those other sites aer brining you the most traffic.
Search Engine Terms
The actual search terms people typed in to a search engine before visiting your site by clicking on your site’s listing in the search engine’s results pages (SERPs).
These are the actual search strings that visitors used in the search engines to find your site and are useful in that they tell you what people are looking for most and this in turn will help you decide on which keywords or niche areas you might want to target to get more visitor traffic.
Top Posts and Pages
The posts and pages on your site which got the most visitors during the period, shown by default for Today and Yesterday.
Gives the best indication of the most popular content on your site whether it is pages or posts as both are included in this rating list. The number of page or post views for each item in the lists are shown.
Click on the graph icon 
next to an individual page or post to get more stats on that page or post:
Clicks
Links clicked on your site by your visitors.
These are the links that you have setup on your site and which users have clicked on to take them to wherever it is you wanted them to go. Also very useful for monitoring which affiliate links are being used the most.
Incoming Links
Links on other websites pointing to a page on your site including the anchor text used.
These are links pointing to your site from results found on Google Blog Search. Click on More to see the details.
Blog Stats
Here you can find a quick summary of your blog stats showing the Total Page Views on your site, the date of your Wordpress site’s Busiest Day and the number of page views on that day and finally the number of page views Today.
Click on the Summary Tables button to get more information on Daily, Weekly, Monthly page views statistics.
Easily Switch Between Blog Stats for Different Sites
In the upper top right corner of your Wordpress stats page you can switch to other Wordpress blogs you have added with the same API key. Just select the blog for wich you want to view stats from the drop down list and click on Switch button.
This is a great advantage for multi-blog owners as it means that you can see all the stats from your multiple Wordpress blogs in the same place.
Give Others Access To Your Wordpress Stats
Another very useful facility of Wordpress stats is that you can give others access to view your blog statistics if you want to.
This option is at the bottom of the page and all you need to do is add their email address.
Your Visits Are Ignored
NOTE: In all the above cases your own visits to your Wordpress site are filtered out of the stats and are therefore not shown.
Hopefully this post has helped you understand how to analyze your Wordpress Stats. If you have a questions please leave a comment below.
My prblem is that I cannot login to Wordpress. My original user name was Johnny59 and a password that I selected. Then when I was setting Akismet I lost my password. I asked for and received another password. Now when I try to login it says error incorrect password. Also had a popup that said invalid username.
So I am confused, I guess I don’t have a username or password. What do i do ? Do i start over and if so where do I start.
John
Hi John,
You are confused and so am I !?!
Not sure where your problem is…
Which Wordpress can’t you login to ?
Your own site at naturalhealthsales.com or Wordpress.com ?
If your problem is at Wordpress.com then just create another new account and use that to get an API key.
If you can’t login to your site them you have a bigger problem!
So if you can clarify what you mean then I will be in a better position to try and help you.
Dave.