On Wednesday, Google made a very important announcement about Google Analytics Real-Time functionality. Starting Wednesday, data that you see in Real-Time is profile specific. This feature will be fully rolled-out in the upcoming weeks. This has two major implications:
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- If your profile has certain filters that exclude traffic, Real-Time will not show that traffic. This is yet another reason to always maintain one unfiltered profile, and then create other profiles to filter data as needed.
- Before this change, only account Administrators were able to use Real-Time. Now, profile Users as well as Administrators will be able to leverage Real-Time.
Prior to this roll-out, there was no way to test filters in Real-Time. You had to wait 24 hours to get data and see if the filter was working properly. According to Google’s Blog Post, you can test newly created filters in Real-Time within a few hours after setting them up. Today, when I tested this and created a new exclusion filter, Real-Time picked it up immediately. This is a great time saver.
This is not restricted to web-pages, but also supports App profiles. For example, if you are releasing a new version of the app, you can test in Real-Time if everything is being tracked properly.
Lastly, this change is impacting how you might use Real-Time to track the viral effect of your marketing campaigns. If you are running a marketing campaign and are tracking how the message spreads in Real-Time, this new feature can help you track the viral effect across different channels. For example, in Real-Time you will be able to see not just where the visitors are coming from, but using a filter track, what social networks are the most effective at bringing traffic to your site right now. This adds a level of granularity to your data that can help make marketing decisions faster.
This new feature is very beneficial, and I look forward to putting it to work.
