Can Google Analytics show me visits by hour?

Question

I am interested in seeing visits on my site broken down by hour - is there any way to generate a report of this in Google Analytics? It appears that all metrics are only broken down by day. Maybe I can get this information through the GA API?

Answer 1

Since Google Analytics was revised the currently accepted answer is no longer available. The current version of Google Analytics will let you view visitors per hour:

1. Go to the Reporting Tab
2. Select "Audience"
3. Select "Overview"
4. Select "Hourly"

If you're trying to determine total traffic by hour of the day for a given date range then you can use this custom report:

https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=custom_report&uid=pToP7693ReSxfSIpbqHmWg

Answer 2

Only a few reports have hour-by-hour data; as far as I know, they're all in the 'Visitors' section.

For example, to see Visits by hour over a period of time, click Visits, Visitor Trending, then Visitors. Then, in the top right of the report, select Graph by: (icon of a clock)

All of the reports under Visitor Trending have hour-by-hour data, except Absolute Unique Visitors.

As far as the API goes, you can check what query combinations are valid here (since there are restrictions): http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataReferenceDimensionsMetrics.html

According to that, all metrics can be viewed by an hourly dimension except Campaign metrics and Visitor (not to be confused with Visit) metrics.

You can test the query you want to run with the Google Analytics Data Feed Query Explorer

Answer 3

If using a (downloadable, emailable) custom report is an option, you can use the custom report described on http://salman-w.blogspot.com/2012/07/analytics-day-of-week-hour-of-day-report.html

The article tells you to do the following:

1. Create a custom report with flat table (I am sure it will work with explorer style reports too)
2. Add the dimension hour (not hour of day)
3. Add the metric visits, pageviews, etc
4. Preview