Almost every websites built these days are embedded with analytic tracking codes to monitor and record details of visitors to a certain level. If you are not using one, you are losing out a lot of information about your visitors. Google Analytics (GA) is probably the most commonly used services out there when it comes to web analytic services. But here’s one problem if GA – data are not quite real time.

It is absolutely fine to have another real time analytic service tracking along side with GA or any web analytic services you are using. Here are some situations where real time traffic monitoring can come in handy:

• Traffic spikes – Abnormal number of visitors indicates your website is having a traffic spike. It should also tell you where these visitors come from, and what page they are currently viewing. You might also want to take measures to prevent the site from going down.
• Social media effect– Real time data allows you to analyze and track the responses of your Facebook shares, Twitter tweets or any other social media sharing instantly.

Here we’ve collected some of the top web analytics services that give you real time result of your traffic. And the best thing is – they are free. Full list after jump.

Clicky

Clicky is one of the most popular real time web analytics service. When you login and view your website statistics then you are seeing statistics which are refreshing every minute.

ShinyStat

With ShinyStat you can measure the traffic of numerous sites at the same time in real time and you can also enjoy particularly advantageous resale conditions.

Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate provides users with one of the best quality real time statistics. This service tracks active users, active pages and also search engine hits and referrers, which help to check where the traffic is coming from. It’s also possible to create multiple groups and to add unlimited amount of websites to track. There are a lot of positive responses about this service. There is also available a desktop tool “Snoop” and a WordPress plugin for your WordPress blog. Despite the fact that this service is absolutely for free, you still have to wait for an invite before you can start using this service.

StatCounter

Real time detailed web stats with highly configurable hit counter. Insert a piece of their code on your web page or blog to analyze and monitor your website in real time. 500 logs and 250’000 page loads per month on your website are for free.

Woopra

Woopra is very comprehensive statistics tracking program. This program offers some interesting features, such as live chatting with visitors, event alerts among other things, real time analytics. These features are very impressive. Unfortunately, you can track only 10’000 page views and have a limited availability for public users.

Performancing Meters

Performancing Metrics does its real time statistics job nicely. This service is pretty decent. You can track current visitors, incoming links or referrers, search engine traffic and so on. This service is for free to use, however there are some features which are only available if you use their paid service. If you use a free account then they restrict the amount of statistics you can view to the last 31 days. There is also available a WordPress plugin for your blog.

Spotplex

This service shows you real time traffic statistics and it also shows how you rank between your competitors who are using this service. There is also a great feature that you can even check the most popular articles of the day on Spotplex website. Quite impressive!

Piwik

Using Piwik, you can easily build your own website analytics plugins by adding new features and removing the ones you don’t need. Piwik is installed on user’s server and that’s why user owns his data. The data is stored on his own database and he can get all the statistics using open APIs. You can fully customize your user interface by dragging and dropping the widgets you want to be displayed.

SiteMeter

This is another popular real time traffic tracking service. This service is for free with its basic statistics but if you want more detailed analysis of your website traffic then you need to pay for the premium account.

TraceWatch

TraceWatch lets you keep track of the visitors to your website in real time. It has detailed statistics and deep analysis using an innovative user interface. This service is for free and it helps you to make your website more effective.

Whos.Amung.Us

Using this service, you can see not only real time number of visitors but also if you click on it, you’ll be brought to a real time list of URLs visitors are currently on. This is impressive feature.

DaCounter

DaCounter is a website counter and traffic analyzer with real time traffic statistics. This service provides reports such as online visitors, visitor statistics, system statistics, content statistics, demographic statistics and also traffic source statistics. It’s easy to install, all you need to do is to sign up for this service and you will be given a code which you will need to add to your website.

Histats

Histats provides unlimited and unrestricted website statistics which are updated in real time and numerous unique counters to choose from. It provides these reports: traffic, visitors, referrer, last 20, special. To get Histats, you will need to enter your site details and then choose a counter. After 20 seconds you will be given a code which you will need to add to your website.

W3Counter

W3Counter provides website statistics and analytics 2.0 style in real time along with a website counter. There are available various reports such as online now, live map, latest refferers, latest searches, content, navigation, visitors, sources. W3Counter also provides a WordPress plugin for your blog for easy integration. To install W3Counter, first of all, add your website then choose your counter style and after you have chosen a counter style, add the code to your website. If you have less than 5’000 page views per day then this service is for free but if you have up to 1 million page views per month then you will need to pay $9.95 per month to use this service.

Feedjit

Feedjit is website statistics which is built for bloggers to monitor their visitors. They can see who are their visitors, where they are coming from and what is the most impressive, is that you can see what your visitor typed in the search engine to get to your website.

Chartbeat

Chartbeat is a revolutionary real-time analytics service that enables people to understand emergent behaviour in real-time and exploit or mitigate it

VisitorVille

First of all, this service is NOT for free but there is a 3-day free trial. The reason why I added this service is because it’s unique. This is real time, visual website analysis which brings your website to life where each building represents a web page, each bus represents a search engine, and each animated character represents a real visitor to your website, just brilliant! This service provides types of reports such as click analyzer, statistical, traffic flow, ad campaign, broken link detector, search term. Just download then install the free trial. After installing the free trial, you will need to create a site map on VisitorVille. It has a huge list of unique features, since it is basically like a “Sim City” version of your website. If you are interested in prices for this service then here is a list of prices: $19.95 (less than 2,000 unique visitors per day), $29.95 (less than 6,000 unique visitors per day), $124.95 (unlimited unique visitors per day).