Data Freshness
Data freshness refers to how recently we've collected, processed, and reported data in your property. If processing takes 20 minutes, then the data freshness is 20 minutes.
Freshness varies because data is processed at different intervals. For example, intraday data is updated throughout the day for quicker access to some of your data, while daily data is more complete (drawing on more data sources) and available once per day for data with longer processing times.
We may take 24-48 hours to process data. During that time, data in your reports may change.
Intervals of data freshness
Analytics has the following typical intervals of data freshness for Google Analytics 360 and/or standard properties:
| Interval | Typical processing time | Properties | Data limits per property | Query coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Realtime | Typically less than 1 minute | 360, Standard | None | Limited to a few dimensions and metrics |
| 360 intraday | About 1 hour | 360 | Premium Normal and Premium Large as defined here | All reports and API queries, except these |
| Standard intraday | 4-8 hours | Standard | Standard Normal | All reports and API queries, except these |
| Daily | 12 hours | 360, Standard | Standard, Premium Normal | All reports and API queries |
| Daily | 18 hours | 360, Standard | Premium Large | All reports and API queries |
| Daily | 24+ hours | 360, Standard | Premium XLarge | All reports and API queries |
About the intervals
Each day, we process data in three intervals—realtime, intraday, and daily—according to the processing times above. These intervals enable you to access some of your data more quickly as it becomes available.
Realtime
Realtime data is the most up-to-date data set and lets you monitor activity as it happens, but it covers fewer features than other intervals.
Intraday
Intraday data provides some data from the previous day, refreshing multiple times throughout the day so you can access data from the previous day more quickly; for 360 properties, intraday data is continuous. It's typically available before daily data in reports and API queries. When the intraday data is available before the daily data on any given day, you can expect the following:
- You may notice temporary gaps in some event-scoped traffic source dimensions (such as source, medium, campaign, and default channel group). These temporary gaps can happen due to delays in receiving data for example from third-party conversion sources.
- If event-scoped traffic source dimensions are available, we'll use the Paid and organic last click attribution model by default until the daily data is available.
- We may apply stricter cardinality limits until daily data is available. As a result, you're more likely to experience the (other) row during this period if your property has high-cardinality dimensions.
Note: If intraday data is available before daily data, the data in reports and API queries may change after the daily data becomes available.
Daily
Daily data represents all the data for a day. If your report uses daily data, you can expect the following:
- If event-scoped traffic source dimensions are available, we'll use the attribution model selected for the property.
- Attribution credit for key events can change for up to 12 days after the key event is recorded, as Analytics' key event modeling improves.
Prior day data processing timeline
This table lists when data is typically available* in the property’s timezone for the prior day for most properties; actual processing times can vary.
| Typical availability | Data type |
|---|---|
| 12:00 am | Daily collection stops** |
| 5:00 am | 98% of BigQuery fresh daily export (beta) data is available for 360 customers |
| 11:30 am | Daily data is ready in Explore |
| 12:00 pm | Daily BigQuery events are ready |
| 3:30 pm | Daily data is ready in Reports |
* This is the typical processing time that most data is usually available by. This is not a guarantee, nor an SLA or an SLO. Data is sometimes delayed beyond these processing times, particularly for large properties, complex data, or during uncommon processing slowdowns.
** Some data can arrive late, at times up to 7 days delayed
Property categories
On any given day, a property is categorized based on the number of events it has collected and processed. A property is categorized as:
- "Normal" if the property has collected and processed fewer than 25 billion events
- "Large" if the property has collected and processed 25 billion or more events
- "XLarge" if the property has collected and processed 250 billion or more events
These measurements are taken from the previous 31-day period, excluding the current day in the property's timezone.
Note that a property that is typically categorized as "Normal" or "Large" can be considered categorized as "XLarge" for a day if it has been collecting and processing an average of 15 billion or more events per day over the previous seven days, excluding the current day in the property's timezone.
Limitations
Data may not be in sync between explorations and reporting.
Offline events
When a user's device goes offline (for example, a user loses their internet connection while browsing your mobile app), Google Analytics stores event data on their device and then sends the data once their device is back online. Google Analytics ignores events that arrive more than 72 hours after the events are triggered.
Features with non-standard data processing
The following Google Analytics 4 features are not covered by the Analytics 360 data-processing service level agreement:
| Feature | Estimated processing time |
|---|---|
| Realtime | Less than 1 minute |
| Unsampled exploration | 1 hour |
| Attribution | 4-8 hours |
| User-lifetime technique | 24 hours |
| Insights | 24 hours |
| Expanded data sets | 24 hours |
| BigQuery daily export | 24 hours after midnight in the property timezone |
| Data Import | 24-48 hours |
Features not covered by Reporting SLA
The following features are not covered by the Analytics 360 Reporting service level agreement:
| Feature | Availability |
|---|---|
| Realtime | Best effort |
| Data API queries | Best effort |
| Audience List API queries | Best effort |
| PDF export | Best effort |
| Unsampled exploration | Best effort |
| Intelligence services (Insights, Single Search) | Best effort |
| Queries that join data from other Google products (such as Google Ads) | Best effort |
| Queries that join data that has been imported | Best effort |
| Reporting queries with more than 1M rows of data | Best effort |
| Exploration queries with more than 1M events | Best effort |
|
Report queries that have filters applied (includes any filtered query from the reporting or exploration interface or from the Data API) |
Best effort |