Trends
Time zones
Ranqo's date ranges start at midnight in your browser's time zone. What that means for chart dates, and when a colleague elsewhere sees other figures.
Ranqo shows dates by your calendar, not the server's. Date ranges start at midnight where you are, and chart points are dated by the day a run finished where you are. Most of the time you will not notice. It matters when you compare figures with someone in another time zone, or figures from two pages.
Where your time zone applies
- Date ranges. A preset such as Last 30 days starts at midnight in your time zone and runs to the present. A custom range runs from the start of its first day to the end of its last day, also in your time zone. Pages read the date picker differently; see the table below.
- Chart points. A run is plotted on the calendar day it finished in your time zone. See One point per run.
- Dates in labels, such as the date after As of on a carried value, or the run date on Source Trends.
Ranqo reads the time zone your browser reports. If it reports none, or one Ranqo does not recognise, UTC is used.
How each page reads a date range
| Page | Presets | Custom range |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility | Start at midnight that many days ago | As picked |
| Competitors | Last 365 days reads 90 days | Reads the last 7 days for a range of up to 14 days, 30 for up to 60, and 90 for anything longer, ending now |
| Sources | Include today in the count, so each starts one day later than on Visibility | As picked |
| Prompts, Tracking tab | Last 7 days reads 7 days; every other preset reads 30 days, and the tab's subtitle says which | Reads the last 30 days |
| A prompt's insights page | Last 365 days reads 90 days, while its changes are labelled against the previous 365 days | Runs from its first day to the present; the end date is not applied |
On the Competitors page, a competitor's detail starts its range exactly that many days before the current moment, not at midnight.
Visibility and Competitors place a run in a range by when it finished. The Tracking tab of Prompts and a prompt's insights page use when it started, so a run that crosses midnight where you are can fall inside a range on one page and outside it on the other.
When runs happen
Ranqo checks for brands that are due at 00:00 UTC every day, and a brand is due once every 7 days. A run takes a while to finish, and its finish time is what dates it.
00:00 UTC is the evening of the previous day in the Americas and the morning of the same day in Asia. So a single run can be dated on different days for two people. Take a run that finishes at 01:30 UTC on 10 September:
| City | Local time | Dated |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 21:30 on 9 September | 9 September |
| Berlin | 03:30 on 10 September | 10 September |
| Tokyo | 10:30 on 10 September | 10 September |
Comparing with a colleague elsewhere
Two people looking at the same brand at the same moment can see different numbers when a run sits near the edge of the range. Say you are in Berlin and your colleague is in New York, and you both pick Last 30 days:
- Your ranges start at different moments. Midnight in Berlin comes six hours before midnight in New York. A run that finished between the two is inside one range and outside the other.
- The figures follow the runs. One of you may count that run and the other not, so visibility, Share of Voice and the change beside them can differ.
- A carried value can appear for one of you only. If the edge run is the only one in a short range, one person sees it and the other sees the previous run marked As of.
- The same run carries a different date. Your chart point and your colleague's can sit on neighbouring days.
Nothing is wrong in either view. Each is correct for its own calendar.
To compare like for like
- Pick a range whose ends fall between runs. Runs are about a week apart, so a custom range that starts and ends a few days away from any run holds the same runs for everyone.
- Compare single runs in Snapshots. A run's own scores are calculated once, over that run, and are the same for everyone who opens it.
- Name the run, not the day. "The run of 9 September, New York time" is unambiguous; "last Tuesday's numbers" is not.
What does not follow your time zone
- Monthly allowances reset by the calendar month on Ranqo's servers, which run on UTC. See Plans and limits.
- Site Tracking's daily charts on the Traffic page group visits by UTC day.
- Google Analytics figures use the dates Google Analytics reports for your property.