How often is my Google Analytics data processed and how is it processed?

Rating: +6

Under normal circumstances, Google Analytics reports are updated once every hour, although slight processing delays of up to a few hours can occur.

In addition, the statistics in the reports are delayed 3 hours behind the current time. For example, if it is currently 10am PST, the Google Analytics reports will contain data for your website through 7am PST. At approximately 11am, your reports will update to contain data for your website through 8am.

This delay is caused by the way Google records your visitation data. When a site hit is first sent to Google it is in binary form. Writing the data in binary forms helps speed up the data writing process. Google records your data for an hour and then starts a second process that converts the binary data to ASCII data. This data is in a standard Apache W3C log file format. After the binary data has been converted and written to the log file, Google process the log file creating the data that populates your reports.