Today after having a large amount of visitors on my blog: http://www.zhoog.com I was checking my stats on Google Analytics. Due to the heavy traffic on my post on "50 stunning 3d renders" google seemed to have updated the statistics half way through the day and I could see what the thousands of visitors were doing and where they were coming from. However when I checked back several minutes later all data had not been included in the report yet. It was back to only about 100 visitors (it's a starting blog).

This must have been due to Google using multiple data-centers for their analytics servers and they had not been updated simultaniously. it was very strange though, because I hadn't logged out of the Analytics center. It seems as if Google can change datacenter while you are viewing your analytics.

Might be something to keep in mind when analyzing very recent data.

And indeed, checking back no my visitor numbers are tremendously up again.

Wierd things happening there. Has anybody experienced the same with MS Analytics?

Yeah I've seen this too. Works almost the same as their clusters and datacenters fro their search engine. They switch them all the time.

Good observation!

Data always differs between services providign stats as they all treat requests in a different manner. I believe you should focus at trends rather than real figures. If you get more visitors it will show up an all web analytics tools, although the number may be scrambled, it still shows your doing good.

Actual values should always be taken with a pinch of salt.

In this case, changing the 'pinch of salt' over time does sound pretty disturbing though.

Stats are so much... Trends are better and ROI is even better... If your actually selling stuff or making money.