Table of Contents for Real Time Reports in Google Analytics Tutorial

• Introduction to real time reports
• Steps to access real time reports in Google Analytics
• Types of real time reports in Google Analytics
• Limits and caveats of real time reports

Introduction to real time reports

Real time reports in Google Analytics provide an overview of what is currently going on, on your site. The reports are updated in real time and every hit to Google Analytics servers gets monitored here. 

In simple terms, this report basically shows you how many users are currently accessing your website, which pages are they interacting with, and whether they completed any goals that you have setup, etc.

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Steps to access real time reports in Google Analytics

Follow the below steps to access real time reports in Google Analytics.

Step-1: Log in to your Google Analytics account.

Step-2:  Click on the ‘Admin’ panel on the left-hand side and select the view for which you would like to check the real time reports.

Step-3: Click on the ‘Real-time’ report from the left-hand menu.

Step-4: Click on the ‘Overview’ tab under ‘Real time’ to view the report.

Types of real time reports in Google Analytics

There are six types of real time reports which provide detailed information of the active users on the website.

• Overview report
• Locations report
• Traffic sources report
• Content report
• Events report
• Conversion report

Let’s discuss each report in detail and see what information is captured in each report type.

Overview report

The Overview report provides a complete overview of the current active users on your website. It provides the information below.

• Current active users on the website
• If the users are accessing the website from web or mobile
• Top active pages on the website
• Top referrals on the website.
• Top social traffic on website
• Top keywords used by the user to access your website
• Top location from where the user is accessing your website.

Locations Report

The locations report in Google Analytics provides information about the geographical location of the active users in the last 30 minutes.

Additionally, you can click on any country in the locations report to view the city from which the users are accessing your website. For example, let’s click on the United States.

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Traffic sources report

This report shows you the traffic source and medium of the users currently on your website.

There are two sections in this report: Active users and page views (refer to the screenshot below)

The active users report provides the source and medium of the users who interacted with your site in the past five minutes. Whereas the pageview report provides the source and medium info of the users who interacted with the site in the past 30 minutes.

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Content report

The content report shows the current active pages that the users are viewing. Similar to the locations report, we have two segments in the content reports; active users and page views (last 30 minutes).

The active users section shows the current active pages that the user is viewing. The page views section shows the pages that the users have viewed in the last 30 mins.

Event report

The event report shows the current events completed by the active users on the website. You can view the active events that are completed by the users, as well as the events that users completed in the past 30 mins time frame.

To know more about how to set up event tracking in Google Analytics refer to this article: Ultimate guide to event tracking in Google Analytics 

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Conversion report

The conversion report shows the recent conversions that are completed on your website from the goals that are setup. 

It shows if the goals are completed by the user using desktop or mobile.

To know more about the goal setup, refer to my article: How to set up goals in Google Analytics.

The ‘Goal hits (last 30 mins)’ tab shows the goal completions which are completed within the last 30 mins time frame.

You can additionally click on any goal and it will display the active page on which the goals have been completed by the user.

Limits and caveats of real time reports 

• Real time reports are not applicable for the User ID enabled views.

• If you notice that the real time reports are not working correctly then validate if you are checking the data in the unfiltered view.

• If you notice that there is no data in your real time reports it could possibly be that there are no active users on the website. In some cases, real time reports will be suspended if you are not using them for a long time and will become active once you login to Google Analytics and click on the real time reports tab.

I hope now you will be able to correctly interpret the real time reports in Google Analytics.

Related Article: Google Analytics real time reports not working? Here is how to fix it