Google Analytics Opens Invitation To Beta Of The New Real-Time Reporting API

Starting today, Google is inviting Google Analytics users to a closed beta of their newly released real-time reporting API.

Opening a number of opportunities to take advantage of real-time analytics, the new API makes it possible for site owners to create queries around real-time data and use the information to benefit their website.

Google offered examples of how site owners could use the real-time API, including querying for top visited URLs to create, “a top trending content widget with the number of active readers” or displaying the active visitor count in real-time.

According to Google, a vacation rental company with access to the beta API placed a real-time active visitor count metric on a conversion page of their site, resulting in a 7.9 percent increase in conversion rates and an 18.6 percent increase in revenue.

Other uses for the API listed by Google included a custom executive dashboard to track key metrics, and an Android app, built by a Google employee, that displays a site visitor metric on the face of his Pebble Watch.

Google offered developers advice on the new API as well:

 For developers the GA superProxy will also work well with the real-time API and Google Charts API (gviz). This enables you to publish a query that is available without authentication. This has advantages in that you can make the request client side so a widget can be written in javascript and added to a site (calling all 3rd party developers!). Additionally this acts as a cache effectively lifting your quota limits.

The real-time API is being released by Google in a closed beta invitation, with a limited number of users to be whitelisted during the next couple weeks.