How To See Traffic Varying Over Time

by admin on 27/12/08 at 2:04 pm

I was asked recently if it was possible to see how traffic to a site varies over time during a particular day in Google Analytics. The dashboard in Analytics provides a quick view of how it varies by day within a date range, but sometimes getting a feel for how traffic is distributed along a 24 hour timeline can be useful.

Using Custom Reporting To See How Traffic Varies By Hour

Here is how to do it. On the dashboard change the from and to dates in the date range to be the day you are interested in. Click Custom Reporting > Create new custom report. In the Metrics category on the left, expand Site Usage and drag Visits into the Metrics area.

Moving down to the Dimensions category, expand Visitors and drag Hour of the day into the Dimensions area.

Name the report by clicking edit at the top and then click Create Report at the bottom.

The initial display might seem confusing as the lines are ordered by descending visit count so the hours may be out of sequence.

You have the following views to present the data:

grid
pie chart
bar chart
bar chart showing comparison to site avaerage

Google Analytics