Google Analytics Catches Up

Google announced yesterday that their hugely popular suite of tools “Google Analytics” is now getting a real-time dashboard that updates with users events as they happen.

This will allow webmasters to track their site traffic in real time without having to wait 24 hours to do so.

This is huge not only because it brings Google in line with popular real-time analytics products like Chartbeat (which aren’t free unlike Google’s alternative), but also because there is no 3+ hours delays on receiving the information.

So basically, you place an article on your website and 5 minutes later you can already check how well it is doing and it’s free.

Google is also highlighting that you can gauge the impact of social channels too, like Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, you can quickly and efficiently tell if your custom analytics query is functioning like it was meant to without delays. So if something that has been posted isn’t getting the response or coverage that was intended, that can be quickly sussed out. We all know that 24 hours may as well be 10 years on the internet.

Real-Time is not the new addition to Google analytics though as enterprise companies will be able to (for a price) add a premium tier for those companies that want more support than Google is currently offering with its free service.

This is yet another example of Google giving what other companies charge for free to its users.

You can see it in action on the video below: