To receive the site’s traffic report and tracking the visitors, we use Google Analytics. Apart from traditional reporting, this traffic analysis platform can perform lot many other tasks as well. For example, it can send you an alert email or text message on your mobile phone in case your site or hosting server is down.
In the new design of Google Analytics, you can find the ‘Admin’ link on top-right corner for the property (listed website) that you have selected. Once you open the admin page, under the ‘Assets’ tab, you can find an asset named as ‘Custom Alerts’. Open the Custom Alert window and click on ‘Create new alert’ button.
Now you need to enter a name for the Alert, Select the properties or websites for which you want that alert to set. You can also set the period for which you want that alert to be sent (treat it as frequency of alert). For the medium of alert, you can select Email and SMS as an option. For SMS, you need to provide the phone number on which you want the alert SMS.
Note – SMS alert is only available for phone numbers in United States. Others can opt for Email Alert Message.
Alert Condition is very important part of the alert. Actually you can choose to receive alert for various possibilities or scenario. If you want to receive alert for downtime of the website, you can select following option,
Alert Condition Page
This applies to – All Traffic
Alert me when – Visits – Is less than – 10 (you may choose smaller or greater number depending on the traffic on your site)
Save Alert. That’s it, now you will receive an alert Email or SMS when your site’s visits is less than 10. For other than new sites, the number of visits less than 10 or 5 means that site is down or is not opening because of some issue. The other situation when this number comes down to a very low amount is when you removed the Google Analytics tracking code from the site’s header or footer (wherever you pasted the same).
Checkout the video showing how to set up downtime alert on Google Analytics
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For instant and real-time alert for site downtime, I would recommend you to use Pingdom like service. You get free Pingdom service for one website per account with limited features.
I hope this tutorial will help you get alert or warning in your site’s or server’s health monitoring.