Hey andrej, no it's not instant, it updates at Midnight UK time! Well that's when mine updates! Hope that helps you!
Last time I checked there was a delay of a couple of hours between a visit occurring and it being reported in GA. It's not instantaneous, but you don't have to wait too long either.
So at midday tomorrow, if you set your date period to be just the current day (i.e. 17/12/2010) you won't see any visitors? The default date period is the last 30 days to yesterday - but you can change that to look at stats for the current day.
Click on the date range and a calendar popup will display. Then select today's date for from and to. I've attached an image showing you how.
Different users of GA don't get different functionality. If you change the date period you are viewing stats for to today, you'll see results for today that are maybe a few hours old.
I think that google analyitics refresh every hour, if you want to look for todays day you must to choose from graph to see only analyitics on one day and choose date...I hope i help a little bit.
Its not every hour! It is once every 24 hours and if you put your time zone in it will be at midnight.
Hey, thanks for going to the trouble of making a pic! But I don't think this will change how regular my stats update.
No, but it will demonstrate that the stats do update regularly during the day and not at midnight, as others have claimed. Check the current day's traffic at midday and then check again at tea time. Assuming you've received traffic in between those times, the number of visitors reported will have increased. That shows that you don't have to wait til midnight for your stats to update.
Oh really? Then how did my stats update from 756 visits at 12:05... ...to 766 visits at 12:13... ... to 780 at 12:20? Did I magically have 3 midnights in the space of 20 minutes? But rather than take my word for it, test it for yourself.