Sometimes you access the data directly in the Facebook or Google web interface and visualize the numbers. Then create a report on DashGoo for the same account, looking at the same time period, but it brings you other numbers. There is an explanation for this behavior.
Like every app available, DashGoo collects data from API providers like Facebook and Google. An API is the “backdoor” to the data, while the Facebook and Google user interface you are looking at is the “frontdoor”. DashGoo only uses official data provided directly by providers and does not work with data provided by third parties.
Providers like Facebook and Google, for example, need to propagate interface statistics to their APIs. META data (ADS, Insights, and Instagram) can take up to 14 days to update with their interface (it hardly takes that long, but this is the official time window provided by them). For Google, this can take up to 24 hours.
So, it may happen that you run a report on April 1st, for example, with a date range between March 1st and March 31st, and the data comes in inaccurately, because the previous day's data may not yet have propagated in its entirety to the API.
Also, a provider's API and its web interface are not always fully in sync. DashGoo relies on the provider's API, which may in some cases provide numbers that differ from the same provider's web interface. Small differences may be seen from time to time and are not a cause for concern.
Another problem in the specific case of Facebook is the time zone. The official Facebook API uses the PST time zone (location of Facebook's headquarters) while the insights in the interface of Facebook pages, for the most part, are usually displayed with data generated within the user's local time zone. This can generate discrepancies in certain metrics.
Converting to GMT-0, Facebook collects the day's data up to 7:00 am (GMT-0). Any value after that will only be displayed the next day.
That is, on 07/01 you will see data from 06/31 from 07:01 am to 07/01 at 07:00 am in the GMT-0 time zone. In Brazil it would be something close to 4 am.
In the case of Facebook Insights, the interface itself and the “Export data” tool can bring discrepant values. You can do a test by downloading the data and comparing. If the values are different, the most correct data will be the ones you “downloaded” on their platform.
DashGoo data will be compatible with that same data present in the Facebook Data Export tool.
What to do when this divergence happens?
Make sure not to work with reports with an ending date range equal to the day the report was generated. If you are working with your report project and want to make sure that the inaccuracy is caused by API latencies, change the end date range to two days or more and compare.
Small discrepancies can be accepted (1 – 6%) and are not considered a problem due to the fact that some data sources update their data differently on the different platforms they offer. But if the data is significantly different for the same date range, please contact us via in-app support so we can investigate the cause.