Web developers often want to know how their sites are performing TODAY. Unfortunately, Google Analytics does not allow users to change the default data range from one month. This takes several extra clicks to readjust one’s dashboard to show the current day’s data. Instead of always having to do this, I now use a little bookmarklet magic to automatically important dynamic data (in this case, the current date) into a general URL structure. I strongly recommend using Google Chrome, but I’ve tested this method on Safari and Firefox as well with good results.
Go to Google Analytics and fire up your dashboard of choice. Change your date range to “Today”, apply the settings, and bookmark this page as is. Now copy and paste the URL into your favorite text editor. It should look something like the following:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#dashboard/Lnd8Hnc37JzcJd3B/a54jf8919827Nvkb91331/%3F_u.date00=20160717&_u.date01=20160717
Note that the characters in blue will be different for you. Replace this segment of the URL with whatever your dashboard URL code is. The characters in red will reflect the current date. Don’t worry about this segment of the URL as you’ll only need to copy over the text in blue. Now you should have:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#dashboard/your-code-one/your-code-two/%3F_u.date00=20160717&_u.date01=20160717
Edit your bookmarked page’s URL and enter the following after replacing the code in blue with whatever corresponds to your dashboard’s URL.
javascript:(function(){function d(a){a=String(a);a.length<2&&(a="0"+a);return a}var c=new Date,b="";b+=c.getFullYear();b+=d(c.getMonth()+1);b+=d(c.getDate());location.href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#dashboard/your-code-one/your-code-two/?_u.date00="+b+"&_u.date01="+b})();
After saving the new bookmarklet’s URL, test it out! It should automatically open your Google Analytics dashboard and change the data range to today’s date.
Let me know if this method worked out for you! 🙂
Hello.
Your method works well and I have created a dynamic bookmark.
I would now like to tweak this bookmark so that it brings up a custom page range and a specific segment view. Can you please provide an example of this as have tried tweaking the code without success. Thank you.
Hey Robert! I’m glad the walkthrough worked well for you! 🙂 Unfortunately, what you’re requesting is beyond the scope of my understanding of GA’s URL structure. Maybe create a shortcut and apply some of the date range magic above? (link to article)