Google Analytics has today launched a real time dashboard. I cannot begin to explain how much having to wait about a day to see the stats pop up has frustrated me in the past.

The primary door they have opened by doing this is being able to analyse site traffic from a social media perspective. Being able to measure the immediate impact from a Tweet or Facebook post is absolutely invaluable to social media strategies and campaign management. It has enabled another level of social media management, in terms of being able to adjust campaigns in real time depending on the current level of interaction (or non-interaction).  Social media campaigns that you setup and push off the the beach with fingers crossed that it doesn’t hit an iceberg and sink seem to be a thing of the past now. Previously by the time you found out that traffic had dropped off a campaign, it was far too late to conduct emergency heart surgery.  We can all now be captains on our own ships and steer them around any obstacles that may arise, or into the viral trade winds that soar across the web.

The official statement can be found here: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html

The second bit of Google Analytics news for the day is the Analytics Premium service launch. This service is geared towards the enterprise level service, and brings a massive list of new features to the table. Unfortunately it’s not available in Australia as of yet, and is only for the US, Canada and the UK.

Their promo video explains a few of the features:

To break it down, there’s four main improvements:

• Extra processing power – increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports
• Advanced analysis – attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions
• Service and support – experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support
• Guarantees – service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting

Nice to see them stepping up to the plate and we’re looking forward to the Australian version when it gets released here.

Their official blog announcement can be found here: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-google-analytics-premium.html