Real-time Activity

Real-time activity is what visitors are doing on a site right now, reported over a short rolling window with a delay of seconds.

The data comes from a short-retention store written by the fast ingestion path, which is why it is available within seconds and why it carries fewer dimensions than the standard reports; segments, cohorts and multi-day comparisons are usually absent there. The figures shown are provisional and get rewritten once sessionization and deduplication finish, so a small gap against the next-day report is normal pipeline behaviour rather than a defect. The view answers operational questions well: whether a release is live, whether a campaign or a published article is bringing anyone in, whether traffic has just collapsed. It answers analytical questions badly, and judging conversion or retention from it is the usual misstep.