Google announced the launch of a new set of reports in Google Analytics today, which shows you what’s happening with your site as it happens. Pretty cool.
It’s called Google Analytics Real-Time (fittingly).
“One way that I like to use these reports is to measure the immediate impact of social media. Whenever we put out a new blog post, we also send out a tweet. With Real-Time, I can see the immediate impact to my site traffic,” says John Jersin of the Google Analytics team. “For example, last week we posted about the latest episode of Web Analytics TV and also tweeted about the post. By campaign tagging the links we shared, we could see how much traffic each channel is driving to the blog as it happened. We could also see when we stopped receiving visits from the tweet, which helps know when to reengage.”
“Another way I’m using Real-Time is to make sure campaign tracking is correctly implemented before launching a campaign,” he says. “When getting ready to launch a new campaign it’s critical to make sure your measurement plan is working before you start driving visitors to the page. With the Real-Time reports you can find out in seconds whether you’re getting the data you want in Google Analytics.”
Users can find the reports in the new version of Google Analytics. They didn’t bother to add it to the old one. You should have access to it from a link at the top of GA. If you’re not already using the new version, this might be a feature that makes you go ahead and switch. You’re going to have to get used to the new version sooner or later anyway.
Now, if they could just get realtime search back.
Google also announced Google Analytics Premium for its biggest customers. It comes with extra processing power, advanced analysis, service/support, and guarantees. More on this here.
