Folks at WebmasterWorld have been complaining that their Google Analytics data seemed off for weeks now. Well, they were dead on. If you go to Google Analytics, you will now notice that they have admitted to having data processing issues between the dates of April 30th to May 5th. Google promised to recover most of the data but all some of the e-commerce data between those date ranges are gone. (New Info: Google tells me that those with e-commerce reporting are more impacted by the data loss, but not all e-commerce data is loss.)
Here is the exact notification from Google:
Google Analytics experienced a data processing error from April 30th to May 5th. Almost all of the data has been recovered and is currently being reprocessed. The recovered data will be reflected in your reports within a few days. Please note that a small percentage of data, particularly in the area of e-commerce reporting, was not recoverable from those dates.
The Google Analytics team promised to take "every precaution to prevent such disruptions from occurring again in the future." But what do Analytics users get for the loss? Nothing. Should you expect something? I don't think so - it is a free service. In my opinion, if you need someone to take the heat, you need to pay.
There is no exact ETA on when the data that Google was able to recover will be represented in the reports. So keep an eye out on your stats for those date ranges.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
