Google Develops a Real-Time API For Analytical Data

Google has launched a beta of its real-time API for Analytics that will allow developers to make decisions based on the real-time data available through their analytical dashboard. Google Analytics launched real-time reporting almost two years ago, but until now, it has been hard to take action based on this data.

Now, administrators will be able “make queries about your real-time data and use that information in whatever way you please.” That means developers can, for instance, put a live visitor counter on a particular website, Once this data is collected changes to the site can be made based on real time information. So if a site is seeing a large number of visitors from a social network such as Facebook a developer can easily add a "Like" button to the site.

The Google Analytics real-time feature provides users with data about active visitors and the pages they are looking at, the geographic location of these visitors and traffic sources. While Google doesn’t note which features it’ll make available at launch, it’s safe to assume that all of those data points will be available.