In the Google AdWords Campaign Management pages it says that "Reporting is not real-time. Clicks and impressions received in the last 3 hours may not be included here."
Is there a rule of thumb - I mean they could be 20% out "on average" or does the number vary widely.
Has anyone done any work on this - I mean that after 2 hours they are 95% accurate or something like that?
I think most people will tell you that it is "widely".
I see repeatable behaviour, such as impressions lagging behind clickthroughs and thus an overly high CTR especially at the start of the day, every day.
So for me I get consistent behaviour *most* of the time, just skewed a little as above.
But sometimes the stats do get snarled up for longer and in more complicated ways, so don't panic!
Rgds
Damon
Do you find that the click data is more reliable? I would have thought that this would be less prone to later adjustments?
Not really more or less accurate: I just suspect that G handles the clickthoughs more quickly because there are fewer of them and they are directly worth something.
Handling low-volume higher-value data fast-track seems sensible to me.
Rgds
Damon
