There’s barely a day goes by when Google, or one of it’s products, isn’t grabbing headlines for one reason or another. This week it’s all about Google Analytics.
Google has announced a new feature as part of it’s free website analytics tool that allows the user to view analytics data in real-time.
Google Analytics bod, John Jersin blogged, “Currently, Google Analytics does a great job analyzing past performance. Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.”
An exciting aspect of this new feature is the ability to measure the immediate impact of social media on a site, so whenever you tweet a link, or share a blog post on Facebook, for example, you can see the live traffic generated as a result. This could be useful for observing when traffic from a certain post slows, allowing you to make decisions about when to reengage.
Another handy use for real-time analytics is making sure campaign tracking is implemented correctly. With the current version of Google Analytics you have to wait up to a day to see if your campaign tracking is working as it should be. Real-time allows you to gather this data within seconds.
To access real-time analytics, current users will need to activate the ‘new version’ of the tool, which can be done by clicking on the ‘new version’ link at the top of the Google Analytics page. Real-time Analytics are only available to account administrators and do not currently support profile filters.
Google is now rolling out real-time to a select number of users but it should be with everyone within a few weeks.
In other news, Google also unveiled this week the launch of their new paid version of Analytics – Google Analytics Premium – that will cost a reported $150,000 per year.
That does sound like quite a hefty sum, so what does the Premium service offer that the free service doesn’t?
- Dedicated Processing Power
- Exclusive features
- Service Level Agreement
- Service & Support
The price tag attached to Google Analytics Premium and the services on offer suggests the service is suited more to the big Fortune 500 and FTSE100 companies, the average site manager should be just fine sticking with the free version for now.
Currently, Google Analytics Premium is only available in the UK, US and Canada but will be rolled out globally in the near future.
For more information, visit www.google.com/analytics
