October 1st, 2011 
Amit Hegde 
Google Analytics has played a pivotal role in web traffic analysis for couple of years. Since this service is available free of cost and information is presented in an intuitive user interface, Google Analytics Tracking has become popular among web developers.
What is Google Analytics?
For those who are new to Google Analytics, here is a brief introduction to Google Analytics : It is a web analytics solution which gives rich insights into website traffic and marketing effectiveness. With powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features you analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. By using Google Analytics, one can write better content with specific target market. You can have a look at the List of Google Analytics Features to get more specific idea on the capabilities of GA. Here is a nice video which gives you a guided tour of GA and how you can use it for effective marketing of your website.
Can I see what is happening to my website now?
Recently google improved GA to provide real-time traffic analysis. Last time when we are developing a custom GA tracking solution, it used to update the data once in 4 hours. Testing team had to wait 4 hours to see the tracking results. This was a head ache as they could not accurately verify the results in real-time.
Gogle Analytics-Real-Time
But guess what, google has provided real-time tracking facility now with the launch of “Google Analytics Real-Time” and it’s free. Real-Time site analytics is available through a set of new reports and this new feature is in Beta stage now. This feature will be available only the new version of GA. To switch to new version of GA, choose the New Version link at the top right corner.
If you do not see GA Real-Time enabled for you, you can sign up here for an early access since the service is enabled for only a select number of users.
With this new feature you can instantly analyze the impact of social media campaigns. You can tag links that you share on social media such as twitter or Facebook, you can instantly see how it is impacting the traffic. If you would like to tag your links and see the impact of social media, you can use the URL Builder Tool to do it.
Posted in 
Tags: 