A Real-Time Report is a live view of what’s happening on your site or app right now—updated every few seconds. It streams fresh events, lists active users, hot pages, and current sessions. Think of it as a flight radar for traffic: you’re watching planes, not yesterday’s log.
Why analysts use it
- Incident response. Spot traffic drops or spikes as they happen (rollback, ad launch, CDN hiccup), and verify status pages or alerts.
- Campaign verification. Confirm UTM parameters flow correctly and paid traffic lands on the right landing pages.
- UX experiments. Gauge immediate behavior shifts before waiting for daily aggregates; watch early conversion rate deltas.
- Ops alignment. Marketing, product, and SRE share one fast feedback loop using the same event stream.
How it works (in plain terms)
Events are ingested, minimally processed, and pushed to a live dashboard. Heavy joins/deduplication are deferred, so real-time views prefer lightweight counts and top lists. Expect near real time: 5–60s delays are normal. Some metrics may look conservative until late events backfill and attribution models recalc.
Mini-formula (active users “now”):Active users = unique users with last_event_timestamp ≥ now − window
Example: 5-minute window → 187 distinct users.
Typical real-time widgets
| Widget | Meaning | Refresh |
|---|---|---|
| Active users now | Users with a recent event | 5–15s |
| Events per minute | Throughput of the event stream | 5–15s |
| Top pages now | Most viewed URLs in-window | 10–30s |
| Top sources now | Live referrers / campaigns | 10–30s |
| Conversions (early) | In-window conversions (may backfill) | 15–60s |
Limits to keep in mind
- Freshness vs. correctness. Late hits, bot traffic, and attribution recalcs can revise numbers later.
- Sampling/aggregation. To stay fast, systems may apply a sampling rate or simplified aggregations.
- Window bias. A 5-minute window can understate long reads, affecting engagement rate and bounce rate until full processing.
Bottom line: Real-Time Reports are for situational awareness, not final accounting. Steer fast; validate later with full processing and your canonical reporting window.