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Google Analytics is Showing Self Contradictory Data!!!

by SocialDemon
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
In the morning at 8am when I am checking Google analytics I am getting one kind of information but in the night at 12.30am I am getting different kind of information! Which made me very skeptical about Google analytics! May be this seems ridiculous but just wanted to know if I am missing something!

Last night at 12.30am when I checked Google analytics I noticed my website has got 50+ visits. And today on 8am (after 7.30 hours) I see 112 visits on my website. Now first question is how many times GA updates its data everyday? And I am pretty sure at 12am when I will check GA data I will see 50+ traffic again and LAST IT WAS JUST 56 VISITs!!! I have noticed it before. So actually where I am doing mistake?
#analytics #contradictory #data #google #showing
  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Google Analytics is not real time unless you happen to be using their Real Time API. They seem to delay the data at least 2-3h, but I've got the impression that it could be up to 24h and the service would still considered to be operating normally.
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  • Profile picture of the author promo87
    Banned
    Well, I guess Google updates in real time, now what makes me say this is i am using google analytics with my android device and there is a tab showing real time visitors, so I can definitely say that Google analytics shows real time updates, i have even test it using my laptop while i was online in my site it analytics show that a user is currently active on your site but as soon as i leave it stops showing, yes there is a delay of I guess 120sec but well, we can say that Google analytics work in real time.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by promo87 View Post

      Well, I guess Google updates in real time, now what makes me say this is i am using google analytics with my android device and there is a tab showing real time visitors, so I can definitely say that Google analytics shows real time updates,
      Yeah, they do indeed have a Real Time API. It's limited compared to their normal results, but as the name suggest it's real time.

      However if you're not specifically looking at the Real Time results, they've got latencies and delayed data processing. 24h is the norm says above article.

      Seriously guys, this is Google Analytics basics and you can find the info by using Google the search engine.
      Signature
      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
      Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

      What's your excuse?
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Hi SocialDemon,

        Have you checked your timezone settings?

        I noticed in your thread that you are observing traffic totals that seems to reset between 8am and 2pm. From the looks of it you must have timezone settings for your account set to the wrong timezone.

        This articles describes how to change timezone settings for your account:
        https://support.google.com/analytics.../1010249?hl=en

        Another thing to keep in mind is that anytime you are looking at a report, that includes data from the past 24 hours, Google Analytics uses data sampling to estimate the traffic based on a sampling of the data, so it isn't showing actual data, but an extrapolation based on a sampling. Also, any reports that contain a lot of data will always be based on sampling, unless you upgrade to the Premium Google Analytics.

        About sampled data: https://support.google.com/analytics.../1042498?hl=en

        How to adjust sample size: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1733979

        @promo87,

        Google Analytics does indeed have realtime reporting, however it is separate data from normal reporting, and it only stores 30 minutes of data.

        Data for regular reporting is processed only once a day by Google analytics so there will typically be some discrepancies if you are looking at reports that include data from from the same day.
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        • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          Google Analytics uses data sampling to estimate the traffic based on a sampling of the data, so it isn't showing actual data, but an extrapolation based on a sampling. Also, any reports that contain a lot of data will always be based on sampling, unless you upgrade to the Premium Google Analytics.
          This right here is the answer, they are sampling data and making extrapolations in order to get the information faster, one of the rules in data analysis is the faster you will analize the data the less precise it will be, so they areiterating the information constantly until thy have counted all the data, that is why it is varying.
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  • Profile picture of the author SocialDemon
    Update: Well now I see 58 traffic! So here is a breakdown...

    12.30am -50(around) visits > 8am 112 visits > 2pm 58 visits

    And I see yesterday I got 58 visits!
    Also at 8am last 30 day traffic was ... 1660. Now at 2pm it decreased to 1546!

    Actually whats happening there??
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    • Profile picture of the author promo87
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SocialDemon View Post

      Update: Well now I see 58 traffic! So here is a breakdown...

      12.30am -50(around) visits > 8am 112 visits > 2pm 58 visits

      And I see yesterday I got 58 visits!
      Also at 8am last 30 day traffic was ... 1660. Now at 2pm it decreased to 1546!

      Actually whats happening there??
      well, that's weird it looks like Analytics is being fluctuating !! I think Google might be upgrading something , that might be the reason behind the it....... :confused: can't just say what Google is up to now !!
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