Changelog

▸Your tagged links finally show up

If you add a tag to a link, like ?utm_source=newsletter on the link in an email, Bearing was quietly recording it and showing you nothing. That traffic sat in Direct, which is the one place you can't act on. Now it's counted as what it is. Your Top sources panel leads with the tag a visit arrived with, falls back to the site that referred it, and only says Direct when there's genuinely nothing to go on. This works on the history you already have, so tags you added months ago are visible today with no setup.

▸Direct got smaller, and that is the point

Only the first page of a visit knows where the visitor came from. Once someone clicks deeper into your site, that trail goes quiet, and Bearing used to count them a second time as Direct. So a visitor from Google appeared under both Google and Direct, and your source rows added up to more than your visitor count. Sources are now settled once per visit and stay settled. Expect Direct to read lower than you remember and your real sources to read higher. Nothing about your stored data changed, only how we read it, and we re-read your full history so past and present line up.

▸Campaigns and medium, without the noise

Top sources is now three tabs: Sources, Campaigns, and Medium. Every row filters your whole dashboard, so you can see how one campaign converts against everything else. Site builders quietly tag their own features, and Wix labels its coupon and email campaigns with a long string of random characters, which tells you nothing. Those are kept out, so the Campaigns tab only shows campaigns someone actually named.

▸When an assistant sends you a visitor

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and the rest tag the links they hand out. Those visits arrive with nothing else attached, so until now they read as Direct and you had no way to know. Bearing now names them. If people are finding you through an assistant, you'll see it building in your sources instead of guessing.

▸Your numbers, minus the bots

We found that some automated traffic was being counted as visitors: search and AI crawlers, link scanners, uptime monitors, and tools that render a real browser engine, so they looked like ordinary people. On some sites it noticeably inflated the counts. We fixed it two ways. On the way in, our filtering is now far more stringent, catching the modern crawlers and rendering tools that wear a normal browser's user agent, plus automation browsers. And we went back through existing history and cleared out the obvious bot traffic. We could not make that historical pass perfect, on purpose: Bearing does not store your visitors' IP addresses or full user agents, which is the whole point of privacy-first analytics, so we can't retroactively fingerprint every single bot hit. We removed the unambiguous data-center traffic and stand by that tradeoff. Because we're early and have only a handful of customers, we reached out to each of you directly to explain what happened and exactly what changed. Your counts should now track closely with other privacy-first tools.

▸Your Heading knows when the website isn't the problem

When a site has very little traffic, or nearly all of it is people already searching your name, fiddling with buttons can't move the needle. The Heading now reads that and says so, pointing you at the upstream levers that actually grow revenue at that stage: demand, positioning, pricing and packaging, and for local businesses your Google Business Profile and reviews. It stops padding the brief with on-page tweaks that can't matter yet.

▸We reuse what doesn't change

Your analytics move every day, so the Heading always reads them fresh. But your site's design and your market don't change by the hour, so it now reuses those between refreshes instead of re-deriving them every time: the read of your page holds until the page actually changes, and the research on your market holds until it's genuinely stale. The result is faster briefs and a leaner, more sustainable product, which is the kind of discipline you want from the tool you trust with your numbers.

▸Count the booking that finished, not the one that started

When the same button text appears in two places, like a “Book Now” that starts a booking and a “Book Now” that completes it, Bearing used to count clicks on both as conversions, so completed bookings could read higher than the bookings you actually got. Now you can pin the finish line: click a goal, and in “Pages it fired on” star the page where the action is truly completed. That page's count becomes your conversion rate everywhere and the number your Heading reasons from. The drilldown shows both figures so you can see how many started versus finished.

▸See how a goal trends, page by page

Click any goal to see its clicks over time as a chart, drawn in the same style as your visitors graph and following whatever range you pick. Then click a page under “Pages it fired on” to scope everything, the stats and the trend, to that goal on that page. It is how you confirm a change moved the action where it counts, like a Book Now on your checkout page, kept separate from the same button earlier in the flow. A removable chip shows the page you are filtered to.

▸A smoother first run

Setup got more forgiving. The “Set a goal value” link now scrolls you to the right place every time, the Save button on brand terms confirms when it has saved, and Goal values stay out of the way until you have installed the snippet and have events to value. The import help also spells out exactly what to upload from a Plausible export: unzip it and choose visitors.csv.

▸Bring your history with fewer flags

The Heading no longer treats a month of imported history as if it all happened today, and it only raises image sizing as an issue when your measured layout shift actually warrants it, instead of on every site.

▸Timeline notes that don't pile up

When you mark a lot of changes on the chart, the notes used to overlap into an unreadable stack. Each note is now a small marker on the chart; hover it to read the date and what changed. Add as many as you like without crowding the graph.

▸Fixed: deleting a timeline note

Deleting a note now gives immediate feedback and removes it right away, instead of feeling like nothing happened. Note dates also show in your site's timezone, so a note you add today no longer shows up dated tomorrow.

▸Your Heading, rewritten as a brief

The full Heading now reads like a brief a growth consultant would hand you. It opens with a verdict and the four numbers that frame it, then the moves to make first. The full read has its own contents: the situation, each move with the evidence and projected impact behind it, and an evidence trail that lays out your conversion funnel step by step, which sources actually drive value, and where people spend their attention. It closes with what to watch before the next brief. Every line still traces to a measured number.

▸The situation, by the dimensions that matter

The Heading's read of where you stand is now broken out the way an analyst would cover it: acquisition, conversion, web performance, and SEO. Each shows the one number that frames it, whether it's strong or needs work, and a plain read of what to do about it. The verdict at the top is now a single clear sentence instead of a paragraph, and every recommended move leads with the concrete change to make. Sections only appear where there's real data behind them.

▸A clearer read at a glance

Bearing got a visual refresh. Text is brighter and easier to read, panels have a cleaner, rounded card treatment, and your dashboard now puts the Heading right beside your visitors chart as its own panel, so the read of your numbers sits next to the numbers themselves.

▸Fixed: the dashboard's read now matches the brief

The at-a-glance Heading on your dashboard was driven by the automatic stats engine, which stays quiet on light traffic, while the full brief is written by the AI, which often has plenty to say, so the two could disagree. We aligned them: the dashboard panel now shows the same verdict, status, and first move as the AI briefing, alongside how recently it was generated, with a link straight to the full brief.

▸Every click knows what page it happened on

Bearing now ties each click, call, and form submit to the page it fired on. So a button with the same label on two pages, say a “Book Now” that starts a booking and a “Book Now” that submits it, is no longer counted as one. Your funnels, conversions, and the Heading can finally tell them apart and follow how visitors actually move through the site.

▸Funnels that read the right direction

Bearing now picks your true conversion, the step people finish on, instead of the busiest link near the top of the page. It reads how deep into a visit each action happens, so a popular “Book” link in your nav is treated as the way in, not the goal. Your funnel and conversion rate follow the real journey from arrival to completion, and the Heading stops mistaking a working button for a broken one.

▸Multiple paths to the same goal

The same conversion is reached different ways, and they don't convert equally. The Heading now compares your entry routes, the page each visitor first landed on, and shows how each one converts to your goal. So you can spot when, say, a service page converts several times better than your homepage, and send more traffic to what works.

▸See the money in your funnel

Your funnel now shows the dollars at stake at each drop-off, not just a percentage. Where visitors fall out on the way to a conversion you've given a value, Bearing estimates what recovering that step could be worth, so the leakiest joint reads in real money. Every step also shows its visitor count, and hovering spells out exactly what each number means.

▸Size your SEO opportunity

With Search Console connected, the Heading now shows a modeled opportunity funnel: the search demand you rank for but don't capture, the visits you'd gain by reaching the top, and the conversions and value that could follow. It's clearly labeled an estimate rather than measured history, so you can weigh the SEO work against everything else on your list.

▸Pin a conversion to the page that counts

In a site's settings you can pin your primary conversion to a specific page, so only the completion step counts, not an earlier button that happens to share its label. Your conversion number reflects finished actions, not clicks along the way.

▸Rank your conversions by importance

Most sites have more than one conversion that matters. Drag your goals into the order that reflects their importance, alongside the dollar value you set, and the Heading reads them in that order. Star one as your headline conversion and rank the rest.

▸Bring your history when you switch

Moving from Plausible or Google Analytics? Export a daily CSV from your old tool and import it in a site's Settings. Bearing backfills your historical visitors and pageviews onto the dashboard chart and into the Heading's trends, so you don't start from zero or lose months of context. Your live data always wins for days you were already tracking. Because these exports are daily aggregates, imported history is day-level, and per-page or per-source breakdowns start when Bearing does.

▸The AI Heading

Your Heading is now researched and written by AI. It reads your live analytics, searches the web to understand your business and its market, reviews your actual pages (including how they look on mobile), and writes a prioritised brief: what's working, what's broken, the on-page problems, and the highest-leverage fixes, each tied to a measured number or a source it checked. Every brief lists exactly which searches and pages it used, so you can see where each point comes from. The Heading opens with your top fixes; expand for the full read.

▸Tell us what your site is for

When you add a site you can describe, in your own words, what it's for and what you want to grow: a service chasing bookings, a publication growing readers, or a brand that just needs to exist. Your AI Heading frames its whole read around that, so an audience site isn't pushed to “increase revenue” and a word-of-mouth local business isn't nagged about SEO it doesn't need. You can set or change it anytime in a site's settings.

▸Performance, measured, not guessed

The Heading now measures your page's load time, weight, and render-blocking resources (plus real mobile Core Web Vitals where available) and connects a slow page to the bounce it's costing you, instead of just telling you to “check your LCP”.

▸Trends over time

It reports how your key numbers are moving this month versus the month before, and when a change you made on the page lines up with a shift in the data, it points to it.

▸Reads how people behave, not just whether they bounced

The Heading now uses time on page and scroll depth to tell engagement apart from a quick exit, and reads the journey: visitors who explore your pages or even start a booking and stop. So instead of “70% bounce, fix it”, it'll say “people are engaging but the booking leaks at the last step”. For an audience site, it'll treat a reader who explored three articles as the near-subscriber they are.

▸Suggested goal values & primary conversion

Using the prices it finds for your business, the Heading suggests what each conversion is worth and which action is your real money conversion, one click to apply. Those suggestions now also appear right on the Goal values settings page (with a “use AI $X” shortcut), and that list is sorted with your primary and highest-value actions on top.

▸Updated plans

The AI Heading carries real cost to produce, so Starter and Growth have been repriced to include it: refreshed weekly on Starter, every couple of days on Growth. Free keeps cookieless analytics and automatic headline insights.

▸Your Heading, in full

The dashboard now opens with a complete read of your site: where you stand, what's working, what's broken, where your funnel leaks, and a prioritised list of what to do next, each recommendation with the evidence behind it and how to validate it. It's the analysis a growth consultant would write, generated from your own numbers and refreshed daily. On the Starter & Growth plans.

▸Guided setup with a live install check

New sites get a three-step checklist (install the snippet, set a goal value, connect Search Console) that confirms “✓ first event received” the moment your tracker comes online, so you know it's working without guessing. Dismiss it once you're set.

▸Regions & cities

The location breakdown now has Countries, Regions, and Cities tabs, so you can see not just which countries your visitors come from, but down to the city.

▸Export to CSV & custom date ranges

Pick any start and end date, and download the current view (visitors over time plus your top pages, sources, locations and devices) as a CSV for your own spreadsheets and reports.

▸Chart comparison line

The visitors chart now traces a faint line for the previous period behind the current one, so you can see at a glance whether you're up or down, with cleaner, uncluttered timeline labels.

▸Funnels

See exactly where visitors drop off on the way to a conversion. Bearing discovers the path to your main goal automatically (no setup), and you can build your own too.

▸Six new dashboard views

Sources ranked by the value they actually drive, entry & exit pages, per-page engagement (time on page + scroll depth), a live “Right now” view, and a way to filter the entire dashboard to just the people who converted.

▸Smarter recommendations

Heading now catches dead-end CTAs (buttons that loop people back instead of moving them forward) and frustration (a button people click over and over). Each insight reads as plain-English interpretation plus a clear next step.

▸Dollar values

Put a real dollar value on one action and Bearing estimates the rest from how often each happens, so insights can speak in money, not abstract scores.

▸Calls, texts & emails count as conversions

Click-to-call, SMS, and email links are now first-class conversions, the action that actually matters for many local businesses.

▸Timeline markers

New pages, detected traffic spikes, and your own notes (“launched an ad”, “redesigned the homepage”) now appear right on the chart, so you can see what moved the numbers.

▸Honest empty states

A quiet site now tells you why: still gathering data, nothing significant to flag, or a tracker that's gone silent (which usually means the snippet was removed), instead of showing a blank.

▸Polish

Period-over-period deltas with copper/blue coloring, one-click “exclude your own visits”, and a clearer, tiered pricing page.

▸Every button & link click, captured

Bearing now records every button and in-site link click automatically, labelled by its text, no tagging required. So you see which CTAs people actually use, not just form completions.

▸PII scrubbing

Personal data (email addresses and phone numbers) is redacted from captured labels in your visitor's browser, before anything is ever sent. The “no cookie banner” promise stays airtight.

▸Sharper goal valuation

Goal-value inference now reads CTA text with whole-word matching, so “Leave booking” isn't mistaken for high-intent just because it contains “book”.

▸Google Search Console

Connect Search Console to see the exact searches people use to find you, and pair that intent with your goals for keyword→CTA recommendations.

▸Goal drilldowns

Click any goal to see where its traffic goes, which pages it fires on, where the converters came from, and how long they took to act.

▸Automatic goal values & attention-vs-value

Bearing infers what each action is worth and flags when attention isn't going where the value is: the moment your visitors pile onto a low-value button while the money one sits ignored.

▸Fleet overview, faster

Per-site sparklines, trends, and live visitor counts; a much faster dashboard; reset-stats and transfer-ownership controls; the /docs guide; and Google sign-in.

▸Heading, the recommendation engine

Bearing's interpretation layer launches: statistically rigorous automatic insights (significant trends, conversion shifts, contributions) with seasonality and multiple-testing correction. It stays quiet rather than guess.

▸Engagement & conversion capture

Time on page, scroll depth, and CTAs, all cookieless, no consent banner.

▸A new look, and the essentials

The instrument design (mono measures, serif interprets) plus dark mode, public dashboards, per-site timezones, a privacy-first footer, and search-engine indexing.