Scraping Real Time Visitors from Google Analytics

Question

I have a lot of sites and want to build a dashboard showing the number of real time visitors on each of them on a single page. (would anyone else want this?) Right now the o

Answer 1

I needed/wanted realtime data for personal use so I reverse-engineered their system a little bit.

Instead of binding to /bind I get data from /getData (no pun intended).

At /getData the minimum request is apparently: https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/realtime/getData?pageId&key={{propertyID}}&q=t:0|:1

Here's a short explanation of the possible query parameters and syntax, please remember that these are all guesses and I don't know all of them:

Query Syntax: pageId&key=propertyID&q=dataType:dimensions|:page|:limit:filters

Values:

pageID: Required but seems to only be used for internal analytics.

propertyID: a{{accountID}}w{{webPropertyID}}p{{profileID}}, as specified at the Documentation link below. You can also find this in the URL of all analytics pages in the UI.


dataType:
    t: Current data
    ot: Overtime/Past
    c: Unknown, returns only a "count" value


dimensions (| separated or alone), most values are only applicable for t:
    1:  Country
    2:  City
    3:  Location code?
    4:  Latitude
    5:  Longitude
    6:  Traffic source type (Social, Referral, etc.)
    7:  Source
    8:  ?? Returns (not set)
    9:  Another location code? longer.
    10: Page URL
    11: Visitor Type (new/returning)
    12: ?? Returns (not set)
    13: ?? Returns (not set)
    14: Medium
    15: ?? Returns "1"

page:
    At first this seems to work for pagination but after further analysis it looks like it's also used to specify which of the 6 pages (Overview, Locations, Traffic Sources, Content, Events and Conversions) to return data for.

    For some reason 0 returns an impossibly high metrictotal

limit: Result limit per page, maximum of 50

filters:
    Syntax is as specified at the Documentation 2 link below except the OR is specified using | instead of a comma.6==CUSTOM;1==United%20States

You can also combine multiple queries in one request by comma separating them (i.e. q=t:1|2|:1|:10,t:6|:1|:10).

Following the above "documentation", if you wanted to build a query that requests the page URL and city of the top 10 active visitors with a traffic source type of CUSTOM located in the US you would use this URL: https://www.google.com/analytics/realtime/realtime/getData?key={{propertyID}}&pageId&q=t:10|2|:1|:10:6==CUSTOM;1==United%20States

Documentation

Documentation 2

I hope that my answer is readable and (although it's a little late) sufficiently answers your question and helps others in the future.