Monitor Website Traffic in Real Time

Google Analytics, the world’s favorite web analytics tool that lets you track visitors to your website, wow offers website traffic reports in real-time. You can see exactly how many people are on your website right now, where they came from and what they are reading?

Earlier there was a delay of 3-4 hours before Google could update their reports but now the Analytics charts on your screen will update almost instantly (see video) as visitors enter or leave your pages.

Google Analytics offers three key metrics for your site in real-time – where are people coming from (geographic location), how are they finding your site (search queries and referrals) and what are they reading on your site (top pages). You also get to know the number of visitors that are currently on your site.

The real-time reporting feature just got enabled in my Google Analytics dashboard and the traffic reports are now absolutely fascinating to watch. The location real-time report is integrated with Google Earth plug-in as well but for some reason, it didn’t work in any of my browsers.

Now if I share a story on Twitter, or if some popular site decides to link to this blog, I can quickly jump to Google Analytics’ real-time reports to see the jump in traffic.

Video – Google Analytics in Real-Time