Realtime lets you monitor activity on your website or app as it happens. The arrangement of cards lets you see how users enter the conversion funnel, and how they behave once they're in the funnel:
- The number of active users during the last 5 and 30 minutes (per minute)
- Active users by first user source, medium, source platform, or campaign: where your users are coming from
- Active users or new users by audience: who your users are
- Views by page title or screen name: which content they view
- Event count by event name: which events they trigger
- Key events by event name: which key events they complete
- Active users by user property: which user properties users are categorized by
Analytics shows user-scoped dimensions and metrics in the Realtime report. That is, the dimensions and metrics in the Realtime report are about how you first acquire users.
View the report
- Sign in to Google Analytics.
- From the left menu, select Reports
.
- Click Realtime.
Ways to use Realtime
With Realtime, you can immediately and continuously monitor the effects that new campaigns and site changes have on your traffic:
- See whether a one-day promotion is driving traffic to your site or app
- Monitor the immediate effects on traffic from a blog/social network post or tweet
- Monitor whether new and changed content on your site is affecting traffic
- Verify that the measurement code is working on your site or app
Comparisons
Apply comparisons to evaluate subsets of your data side by side, e.g., how users 18-24 compare to your overall user base, or how two different campaigns compare to each other.
Click to create a custom comparison.
Click one of the bubbles on the map to create a comparison of all users to users in that particular city.
User snapshots
Click View user snapshot at the top of the report to see a snapshot of data for a single user.
A snapshot includes information about the user's device, app version, and location, along with the top events the user triggered, and the relevant user properties.
Click the arrows in the first card at the top of the report to change the snapshot from one user to another.
Things to keep in mind
User processing
Realtime lets you see:
- “Active users in last 5 minutes”, which shows all users on your site or app in the last 5 minutes.
- “Active users in last 30 minutes”, which shows all users on your site or app in the last 30 minutes.
- "New users", which shows users on your site or app for the first time.
- “Active users”, which shows returning users who have been processed by Analytics.
New users and returning users who haven't been processed are excluded from the Active users count.
User acquisition processing
The processing of user acquisition data is limited in Realtime report. The “Active users by First user source” card shows information only for established users, such as users that’ve already gone through processing in normal reporting.
This means that if a user is new or still hasn't gone through the normal batch processing, you won’t find that user in the “Active users by First user source” card because there’s no information for “First user source” or “First user medium” yet.
App data
App data is batched to conserve battery life, so you may notice delays. Batching typically occurs on the order of minutes.
No data
If you don’t see any data in your Realtime report, it’s possible that there are no active users.
Attribution data
Like the DebugView report, the Realtime report performs limited attribution analysis to ensure responsive reporting. We recommend that you refer to the Acquisition reports for the most accurate attribution information.
Realtime report vs. DebugView report
The following table outlines the key differences between Realtime and DebugView reports.
| Realtime reports | DebugView reports |
|---|---|
| Displays user activity during the last 30 minutes | Displays user activity during longer periods than 30 minutes (if debug mode is enabled) |
| Supports both web and app data streams | Supports both web and app data streams |
| Creating comparisons lets you see data for a specific stream | Selecting DEBUG DEVICE lets you see data for a specific device |
| The View user snapshot option displays data for a random user | N/A |
| Anyone with access to the Google Analytics 4 property can view the data | Usually used by web or app developers |
Related resources
Use the Google Analytics Reporting API to create a Realtime report.
Explore the dimensions and metrics available via the Realtime Reporting API method.