A very silent Sunday...

[Edwin]

I've been playing with Google Analytics' realtime view of our domain sales lander (look at the new Analytics interface, then choose "Real-Time (beta) and then "Overview") and the picture it paints isn't particularly pretty, at least on a Sunday around dinner time

The site's had just 2 visitors in the last hour (from 7,000 names pointed at it) and both have been as a result of Google searches for which that domain name happened to rank!

Still, it's fun to see a little "blip" in the report as each person comes in, and hopefully at a busier time of the week it will be more useful too...

 

[Admin]

How funny I was doing the same thing earlier!

Even Acorn traffic drops a lot on Saturdays and Sundays so I guess people have better things to do than sit online (makes me think they save that for working hours )

I couldn't get on with GA reports so purchased something else to do some SEO tracking.

Admin

 

[Edwin]

I guess people have better things to do than sit online

I guess based on your post and mine, that should read "MOST people have"

 

[vizzo]

My traffic's down on all my sites on saturdays and sundays.

 

[Aiden Roberts]

That's a cool tool but it confirmed what I already knew "nobody is on my sites" ah well I am sure I will be obsessed with it from here on in.

Aiden

 

[Alien]

How nifty! Didn't know that was there, watching one of mine.....7, 11, 15, 4, 22, like lottery numbers, lol.

 

[Systreg]

look at the new Analytics interface, then choose "Real-Time (beta) and then "Overview")

@ Edwin, I'm not seeing this, have you missed a step out?

I logged in to Analytics, which automatically takes me to the new interface, and there's nothing called Real Time (beta) for me to click on on that page.

 

[wb]

@ Edwin, I'm not seeing this, have you missed a step out?

I logged in to Analytics, which automatically takes me to the new interface, and there's nothing called Real Time (beta) for me to click on on that page.

You need to click the tab at the top called 'Home' first (assuming it's on 'Standard Reporting' by default, like mine is).

 

[Edwin]

Actually, it looks like Analytics is missing a lot of visitors. I'm logging hits to the site in a text file and I'm getting "real looking" visits from people with absolutely normal-looking User Agents but which are not showing up in the Realtime view on Google.

And we're not talking small numbers, but I can see 5-10 visitors in the log for every 1 that shows up on Google Analytics.

For those who know these things, here are a few examples of the user agents that Analytics Realtime "missed" just in the last 10-15 minutes. Note that they HAD to load the index page because the php behind it incorporates the log write function, so a 404 hit wouldn't trigger a record.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x4.90)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.79 Safari/535.11
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x4.90)
johnthebaptist.co.uk Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

Or am I missing something and they're rogue bots?

 

[MASSEY]

Use getclicky.com far better than GA.

 

[Systreg]

@ WB, there isn't a tab at the top of my Analytics page called "home".

 

[Brassneck]

That's pretty cool - also quite sobering to see sites which nobody has looked at for hours!

Stephen.

 

[wb]

@ WB, there isn't a tab at the top of my Analytics page called "home".

Have you clicked into the URL listed for the account?

If you visit this link, it should give you a list of your Analytics accounts in the new interface: https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?pli=1

You then need to click on the URL so it reloads and gives you the 'Home' tab.

 

[Dizzy]

@ WB, there isn't a tab at the top of my Analytics page called "home".

I had the same problem initially. I created a Dashboard and it suddenly started working.

Hope that helps?

I've just watched somebody go through the whole process of landing on one of my sites, going to the shop page and buying something and then seeing the order flash up on my Blackberry. Really cool and thanks for sharing Edwin. Will be spending way too much time watching this now.

 

[retired_member21]

I track my own clicks on aff products (not visits) & where they came from / what phrase. My main site been ok - actually higher than normal

 

[Alien]

I track my own clicks on aff products (not visits) & where they came from / what phrase. My main site been ok - actually higher than normal

Nick, you should see some of the live searches related to you I can see at the moment on one of my sites (you'll know the one) - it's quite surprising!

 

[Systreg]

@ WB and Dizzy, thanks, got it now, but can't say I'm impressed with it, all it tells me is 2 people are currently on the site I'm looking at in Analytics, and that one of them visited by using the search term how to stop a relative involved nigerian love scam, apart from telling me the actual number of live visitors on site, nothing different to normal Analytics, can't see the point in it really.

 

[Aiden Roberts]

one of them visited by using the search term how to stop a relative involved nigerian love scam,

Haha come on why wouldn't you want to know what long tails are working for you

That's a hell of a niche

 

[Systreg]

Haha come on why wouldn't you want to know what long tails are working for you

Stuff like that doesn't interest me and I rarely look at Analytics. I've never been bothered where visitors come from or what search phrases they used to get to the site, that might be important to seo types or people who want to know long tail stuff, but all that matters is that the visitor is there, nothing else

That's a hell of a niche

I've got quite a few sites in the Nigerian scam/anti scam info niche, been a scambaiter for years, so it's an big area of interest for me.

 

[murph]

I love that real-time stats in GA beta... Although they need to go one step further and show the full click path of the visitor (and ip). Other services do this and it's invaluable for visitor analysis!