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Using enhanced e-commerce (GA) how long does it take Google Analytics to aggregate data?

Before Tuesday, March 14th, we saw the data lag in Google Analytics at approximately 1-2 hours. (It was never immediate.) You can see this effect on the Conversions > Ecommerce > Overview page if you search by date and select "today" to "today" (1 day's worth of data)

As of Tuesday, March 14th, we started seeing the lag for this overview report anywhere from 8-12 hours, with an inconsistent aggregation time. For example, it is now 4 PM here on the east coast (EDT), and here is a screenshot of our GA overview tab (I have obscured the revenue number for our privacy). As you can see, there are no numbers after 6:00 AM.

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We saw this same effect yesterday (about 8-10 hour lag), and the following day the overview report seemed to fix itself (catch up with all of the aggregated data).

Now, what's more interesting, is that if we either A) Add a "Secondary Dimension" or B) use a "Custom Report", we can see all our data near real-time. For example, if I switch into the Ecommerce > Sales Performance report, then add a Secondary Dimension of "Hour of Day", I can see all my data through 2 PM today (about a 2 hour lag as it is now 4:22 pm as I am writing this)

[Sales-Performance-report-showing-data-through-2pm[2]

Note that to replicate this I sorted the "Hour by day" column by descending order (showing most recent first.)

Our questions are:

(1) Does anyone know why searching by Secondary Dimension or Custom Report shows us the data in more real-time than just looking at the overview report?

(2) Can anyone else confirm that what used to be a 2-3 hour delay now appears as if it is a 8-12 hour delay, starting on or around March 14th (possibly a few days earlier, this is the first day we can remember seeing this effect)

We are using Universal Analytics (with Enhanced E-commerce) implemented via the newer analytics.js. We are NOT using the older ga.js (we moved away from that about a year ago.)

We are not a GA 360 customer, just a regular free account.

Solution

  • From Google Analytics Help Center article.

    Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics will result in the reports being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day processing, reduce the number of sessions your account sends to < 200,000 per day. For Analytics 360 accounts, this limit is extended to 2 billion hits per month.

    What it means is that for Standard accounts up to 48h delay is normal, if you have more data it can take more if you have less data it can be faster.

    Regarding your observation that certain reports load faster than others this is linked to the design of Google Analytics Backends. Google will generate pre-aggregated tables with common reports to speed up consult and that sometimes can takes longer to process. Other non-common reports can't be answered by aggregated reports so it can be responded by a different backend that already has fresher data. So it is considered normal to see different levels of freshness in different reports.

    Google Analytics 360 has fresher data of course.

    This other table from the HC article highlights some of the differences and has more info.