Google Analytics Real-Time
Just last week we were talking amongst ourselves in the office about the need for real-time Google Analytics data on our blog. Turns out Google were listening and came through with the goods, announcing real-time features for their Analytics service.
While I’ve used real-time analytics in the past on different CMS’s, most offerings available on the market these days for WordPress tend to radically reduce the load time of your website, which really isn’t worth it considering the rankings drop you’ll most likely experience. Luckily, Google Analytics has managed to sidestep any issues with page load times and gives an excellent representation of how your website is performing in real-time.
Previously, we’d upload a new blog post and have no real indication aside from social channels about how it was performing until the following day. You can use link shorteners like bit.ly and Google’s own link shortener, but both of those only really give the amount of clicks with no real context.
The new real-time Analytics features are a great way to not only see how many people are on your site at any given time, but also a great way to measure how effective your social media channels are performing at funneling your community to your blog in real time. Knowing when your social interactions are waning gives a great indicator for when you should be reengaging with your audience and breathing new life into a certain piece through social media.
Being able to see users as they trickle in gives you a better idea of how your blog posts are performing and can even be used to make quick content changes that will improve your ranking for certain terms if you notice an influx of search traffic from a specific term that has even more potential. Overall the real-time features are a welcome addition to the Google Analytics service that provides a better overall picture of your websites traffic in real-time.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
