Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the advanced free solutions but not being a real time platform definitely sets it back. It has been so long and i am wondering why Google is not offering real time tracking (may be with premium accounts, if not for free). Infrastructure might be a bottleneck but is it the only reason? GA might be mammoth in size when compared to Mixpanel or Chartbeat but how are these companies addressing the scaling issues?
Mixpanel and Chartbeat start charging for analytics at a relatively low level of usage. Money, smartly applied, can solve a lot of scaling issues.<p>While I've got no doubt that Google <i>could</i> make their analytics product real-time, they've probably done the cost-benefit analysis and decided it wasn't worthwhile. Real-time analytics are just eye candy for the twitchy unless you're able to make real-time changes based on those analytics, and the vast majority of analytics users aren't nearly so nimble.
GA becomes much closer to realtime once you realize that you do not see data for today simply because it is not selected by default. Select today and you'll see data with 2-4 hour lag only.
Google Analytics exists so marketers can measure the impact their AdWords and AdSense spend is making and turn around and get a bigger budget.<p>It doesn't really try to be a business analytics tool - nor a real time analytics tool.<p>So the answer to your question is "Because that's not their business."<p>(Some of the more tin-foil hat wearing PPC guys out there say it's an incredibly bad idea to share your conversion rates to people that sell ads to both you and your competitors in an auction. This is probably not wrong.)
First, ask what the purpose of GA is: ultimately, it's bottom-line justification is that it helps prove to advertisers just how effective their ad spend is on Google. Use AdWords / AdSense, see how much money you are making per conversion etc., spend more money in a virtuous cycle.<p>From this perspective, real-time results might not help so much - how long would someone want to run a campaign to see if it was effective, after all?<p>This being said, I think that even within that context there is a business case. Given the distribution of ad dollars on Google, if P&G or Ford or some other big client was doing huge ad spends, it could be meaningful to tweak things in real-time throughout the day to try to find the best results of A/B/C/.../X tests without wanting any real lag. Now it could be that GA responds faster for certain accounts and this isn't a problem; I wouldn't know first hand one way or another.<p>I think that conceptualizing the problem from a business perspective helps explain why, for most cases, it isn't important that Google offer a real-time product. But, as we see with Google Instant, there is always room to improve even when things don't appear to be 'compelling' of their own accord!
I find GA to lag about 20 minutes - 1 hour. Good enough for me. Analysis is done best when you have the whole picture, not just the first 2 minutes of it.
Use Reinvigorate bro I can't live without it!<p>This is the reason...because they don't have to! A company...excuse me a mammoth of Google size is not distracted and moved by little seemingly meaningless issues unless they get to a point that they have to address this issue.<p>If Google was a small startup that would have been the first thing they tacked to keep innovation & momentum charging forward and therefore gain traction and a larger userbase.