It means I can’t see traffic i got today. Also is it only specific to API or Overall Analytics System?
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It means I can’t see traffic i got today. Also is it only specific to API or Overall Analytics System?
The reason Google recommends this is because for most of the data, there is about a 24 hour delay before you see it in reports or have it available for pulling with the API. The extra 24 hours on top of that is a buffer for insurance.
So if you look at a report or pull data with the API from like 12 hours ago, and then wait an hour or whatever and pull the data with same ranges/metrics/etc… the numbers won’t match up, because by then, more data will have become available. But it’s data that was already there (people didn’t take a time machine into the past and visit your site, obviously)…it was just not yet processed and available for looking at through the report/API.
A delay in data for reports (or through an API) is not unique to GA. Different reporting tools have different “lags” in data availability, depending on how their databases are setup, how they process the data, how much you are paying for the services, etc… for instance (these are the 4 major tools I’ve used):
Yahoo Web Analytics data is more or less real-time
Adobe/Omniture SiteCatalyst is..they say real-time but in practice I’ve seen it take anywhere from instant to an hour
WebTrends has a 24 hour delay
GA has a 24 hour delay
But this isn’t as big a deal as you might think. Most companies look at reports by the week, month, quarter, year, so really the delay isn’t a problem for the people that matter. The only people that really feel it are the code implementers who have to sit there and wait to see data come in when they are trying to QA an implementation or debug when there is a potential problem.
But even then there are a lot of tools out there that let you see in real-time what is physically being sent to the tool (like firebug, charles proxy, etc…), which greatly helps in QAing. It doesn’t really help as far as QAing stuff that requires settings/alterations within the tool’s interface, but still, it’s a big help.