If you are a fan of Google's ubiquitous Analytics system, you will probably be delighted to know that you can now get real time visitor information. It is only available in the New Analytics Beta version, and is being rolled out to Google UK over the next couple of weeks.

So what is it good for? Obviously, sites with higher traffic volumes will benefit the most, but here's a few things to consider:

• Measure your social media response in real time. Have you got a big Twitter or Facebook following? Send out a message, and see the increase in traffic, and the actions they take after following the initial link.
• Making changes to the site? Measure the effects on bounce rates and conversions immediately, instead of waiting, which could help to identify browser compatibility problems or other issues.
• Use live visitor information to support real-time decision making for customer support staffing levels.
• Measure the effects of smaller changes quickly - like changing a menu order - without using a full split test.

What will you use it for?

Real time data is not available to all users yet, and the location in the reporting is changing: for most people, it will appear by clicking on the 'Home' tab at the top and then select 'Real Time (beta)' in the left menu.