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Parse.ly icon
Actively maintained Tested up to 6.9.9 #95 in analytics

Parse.ly

The Parse.ly plugin facilitates real-time and historical analytics to your content through a platform designed and built for digital publishing.

Active installs1K+1K+ tier
Downloads · 30d1.5K▼ -28.3% vs prev. 30d
Rating5/51 reviews
Health score61/100Fair
All-time downloads101.2KSince Jul 2012
Support resolved—No recent threads
RequiresWP 6.1PHP 7.4+
Downloads · 7d361▲ +7.4% week over week
Our verdict

Use with caution

Parse.ly works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 1 month ago, and scores 61/100 on our health check.

  • Very few reviews so far
  • Only tested up to WordPress 6.9 (latest is 7.1)

How does it stack up?

Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support

Daily downloads

78157236Jul 2Aug 15Sep 29
Yesterday68
Daily average (1y)43
Peak day315Aug 26, 2026
Last 12 months15.6K

Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.

Rankings

Where Parse.ly stands today

WordPress.org search rankings

Live position in the plugin search, top 100
KeywordPositionCompeting pluginsCategory
analytics >100 7,544 Best analytics plugins →
content marketing #92 3,606 Best content marketing plugins →
parsely #1 1 Best parsely plugins →
statistics >100 3,147 Best statistics plugins →
stats >100 2,587 Best stats plugins →

Version adoption

Share of active sites per release.

  • 3.2466.2%
  • 3.2311.0%
  • 3.169.9%
  • Other12.9%

Rating breakdown

★★★★★★★★★★ 5 from 1 reviews

  • 5★100.0%
  • 4★0.00%
  • 3★0.00%
  • 2★0.00%
  • 1★0.00%

About Parse.ly

From the official readme · v3.24.1

Description

Designed and built for digital publishers, Parse.ly helps you understand how your audience is connecting to your content.

Thousands of writers, editors, site managers, and technologists already use Parse.ly to understand what content draws in website visitors, and why. Using our powerful dashboards and APIs, customers build successful digital strategies that allow them to grow and engage a loyal audience.

Join industry leaders — like NBA, Slate, News Corp, and Condé Nast — who already use Parse.ly to bring clarity to content, audience, and analytics.

Feedback, suggestions, questions or concerns? Open a new GitHub issue or email us at support@parsely.com. We always want to hear from you!

NOTE: The plugin requires an active Parse.ly account. Sign up for a free Parse.ly demo.

Features

The wp-parsely plugin is packed with features that allow for a seamless integration process, and brings the power of the Parse.ly dashboard into WordPress.

Automated integration

The plugin automatically inserts the Parse.ly metadata and JavaScript in all published pages and posts (Custom Post Types are supported). It also provides a settings page to customize your integration, with options including:
– Output Parse.ly metadata as JSON-LD or repeated meta tags.
– Choose whether logged-in users should be tracked.
– Define how to track every Post Type (as Post, Non-Post or no tracking).

Parse.ly Content Intelligence

Content Intelligence is a set of content insight tools including:
– The Parse.ly Dashboard Widget – Displays the site’s top posts in the WordPress Dashboard.
– The Parse.ly Stats Column – Displays published post performance for the last 7 days in Post Lists.
– The Engagement Boost feature – Helps you increase page views and engagement by strategically placing links to key content within high-performing articles on your site.
– The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar – This sidebar is integrated into the WordPress Editor and offers insights about the content currently being edited such as:
– Title Suggestions – Generates title suggestions for the post/page currently being edited.
– Smart Linking – Automatically adds links to the current content that point to the most relevant and top-performing posts.
– Related Posts – Displays a list of the website’s most successful posts, similar to the post/page currently being edited.
– Performance Stats – Displays performance metrics about the content currently being edited.
– Excerpt Suggestions – Generates an excerpt suggestion for the post/page currently being edited, from the Excerpt panel of the Post Editor’s settings.

The Parse.ly Recommendations Block

The plugin includes a Recommendations Block that displays a list of posts related to the currently viewed post/page. The Block is useful for showcasing related content to visitors, and it can also be used in Site Editing mode or as a Block-based Widget.

Advanced integrations support

While the plugin works out of the box for basic integrations, it offers a host of features that easily allow for advanced integration scenarios:
– Support for Google Tag Manager, AMP, Google Web Stories and Cloudflare is included.
– The plugin exposes the wpParselyOnLoad and wpParselyOnReady JavaScript hooks that allow for advanced integrations requiring JavaScript, such as Dynamic Tracking.
– Support for WordPress network/multisite and decoupled/headless (GraphQL and WP Rest API) setups is included.
– Last but not least, a wide range of hooks is available in order to customize the plugin’s functionality even further.

Documentation and resources

IMPORTANT: If you are a WordPress VIP customer, please consult the WordPress VIP documentation for more details.

Sample Parse.ly metadata

The standard Parse.ly JavaScript tracker inserted before the closing body tag:

<script id="parsely-cfg" data-parsely-site="example.com" src="https://cdn.parsely.com/keys/example.com/p.js"></script>

A sample JSON-LD structured data for a home page or section page:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebPage","headline":"WordPress VIP","url":"http:\/\/wpvip.com\/"}
</script>

A sample JSON-LD meta tag and structured data for an article or post:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/wpvip.com\/2021\/04\/09\/how-the-wordpress-gutenberg-block-editor-empowers-enterprise-content-creators\/"},"headline":"How the WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor Empowers Enterprise Content Creators","url":"http:\/\/wpvip.com\/2021\/04\/09\/how-the-wordpress-gutenberg-block-editor-empowers-enterprise-content-creators\/","thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wpvip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ladyatdesk.png?w=120","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/wpvip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ladyatdesk.png?w=120"},"dateCreated":"2021-04-09T15:13:13Z","datePublished":"2021-04-09T15:13:13Z","dateModified":"2021-04-09T15:13:13Z","articleSection":"Gutenberg","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam Wendland"}],"creator":["Sam Wendland"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Enterprise Content Management Platform | WordPress VIP","logo":"https:\/\/wpvip.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/cropped-favicon-dark.png"},"keywords":[]}
</script>

Contributing

Development, code hosting and issue tracking of this plugin happens on the wp-parsely GitHub repository. Active development happens on the develop branch and releases are made off the trunk branch.

To run the plugin locally or to contribute to it, please check the instructions in the CONTRIBUTING file.

Installation

The plugin requires an active Parse.ly account. Sign up for a free demo of Parse.ly.

For more information, please visit the installation instructions in the official documentation.

Changelog

Please visit the changelog.

Full changelog on WordPress.org →

Screenshots

The Parse.ly Dashboard Widget, showing the website's top posts.
The Parse.ly Dashboard Widget, showing the website's top posts.
The Parse.ly Stats Column (on the right), showing information about content that is being tracked as Posts.
The Parse.ly Stats Column (on the right), showing information about content that is being…
The Parse.ly Engagement Boost feature.
The Parse.ly Engagement Boost feature.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Title Suggestions panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Title Suggestions panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Smart Linking panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Smart Linking panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Related Posts panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Related Posts panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Performance Stats panel.
The Parse.ly Editor Sidebar, featuring the Performance Stats panel.
The Parse.ly Excerpt Suggestions in the Post Editor's settings.
The Parse.ly Excerpt Suggestions in the Post Editor's settings.
The Recommendations Block, showcasing links to related content on your site.
The Recommendations Block, showcasing links to related content on your site.

For developers

Is this your plugin? Show off the numbers.

Add a live badge to your site, docs or GitHub README. It updates on its own — no account needed.

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FAQ

Parse.ly: quick answers

Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.

Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 30, 2026

Is Parse.ly free?

Yes. Parse.ly is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.

Is Parse.ly safe to use in 2026?

Parse.ly works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 1 month ago, and scores 61/100 on our health check.

How many websites use Parse.ly?

Parse.ly is active on 1K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 101,237 times since it launched in July 2012. It was downloaded 1,488 times in the last 30 days.

Does Parse.ly work with WordPress 7.1?

Parse.ly is officially tested up to WordPress 6.9.9, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.

What PHP version does Parse.ly need?

Parse.ly requires PHP 7.4 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.

When was Parse.ly last updated?

The latest version, 3.24.1, was released on August 26, 2026 (1 month ago).

Who makes Parse.ly?

Parse.ly is developed and maintained by Parse.ly.

What are the best alternatives to Parse.ly?

The most popular alternatives to Parse.ly are Site Kit by Google (5M+ installs), MonsterInsights (2M+ installs) and WP Statistics (600K+ installs).

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