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I have a website that has had a decent spike in popularity. It's a real-time multiplayer game, and on average I have around 100 users at once. You can see this if you total all of the first numbers in the "#/#" player column.

In spite of this, Google Analytics real-time tracking only shows around 50 users enter image description here

The tracking script is definitely on all of the pages. Due to the nature of the game, my sessions are very long (~9 minutes on average). Could that have something to do with it? Also, is this likely affecting my long-term data?

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The problem appears to be with the longer session time. Google Analaytics limits the real time data to users active with a 5 minute window. So, if they stay on a page for 9 minutes, they would fall out of active after 5 minutes. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/real-time-reports-google-analytics/

There could also be filters in place limiting some of your traffic down or there could be people who are blocking tracking altogether. Though, both of those seem less likely to explain a 50% drop off.

As well, for better/more accurate real time monitoring you can use of log monitoring tool to keep an eye on who is actively interacting with your website by whatever terms you want to define. For example, check out: https://www.logfusion.ca/

Hope that helps!

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  • It's also worth noting that some user's web browsers may be blocking known third-party analytics scripts as a result of privacy settings. For accurate data you'll need to rely on your webserver's server-side logging/monitoring mechanisms rather than client-side javascript tracking, or aggregating the data from both methods.
    – richhallstoke
    Feb 17, 2016 at 10:41

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