Bookmarklet Fun: Check Google Analytics for Today [update]
Update! Our friend Ryan from CyberNet pointed out a bug in the version I posted yesterday, so you'll want to update your bookmarklet with the fixed version provided below. Sorry for the trouble!
Like anybody that has a website, I love Google Analytics… but it drives me crazy that the default view is for the last 30 days when I really just want to see what has happened today. The only way to check for today is to manually change the date in the report, so I hooked up a bookmarklet to do that for me.
With a small modification, you can use the same bookmarklet for your own use. All you'll have to do is replace the ID in the bookmarklet with the ID for your Analytics account. (Note that you could use this to your advantage to make separate bookmarklets for multiple accounts)
First, drag the following bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar:
Now you'll need to figure out what your Analytics account ID is by logging into analytics and going to the dashboard for your account. Find the long number after "?id=" and save it somewhere.
Now open up the properties of the bookmarklet (This example uses Firefox, but IE works similarly)
Find the "YOURIDHERE" part of the text in the location bar, and then replace that with the number you saved from Analytics.
For those interested, here's the bookmarklet in all it's hacked together glory:
javascript:var d=new Date();var pad='';var padm='';
if(d.getDate()<10){pad='0';};if(d.getMonth()<10){padm='0';};var t=''+d.getFullYear()+padm+(d.getMonth()+1)+pad+d.getDate();
location.href='https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/dashboard?id=YOURIDHERE
&pdr='+t+'-'+t+'&cmp=average'
If anybody can think of a better way to accomplish this, be sure to let us know in the comments.
Awesome. That's the first option they should have put in there. Thanks!
Wow, that's a really, really handy tip for an annoyance which happened to be plaguing me just as you posted this. Thanks a lot!
It takes 4-6 hours for my "today" data to be updated on GA, so it's about useless for that. I use Adsense pageviews data instead. It doesn't catch those viewers that block ads, but that's a pretty constant percentage. If I need exact figures, I use GA from yesterday backwards. And I have an Adsense monitor that sits in my system tray, so I can mouseover it at any time and see how my pageviews are doing today.
Sweet! Thanks for a great tip. Now if only I could tell 'which page' I was on in the Google search (instead of just saying the source was Google etc) that would help.