Why today’s conversions will not appear in the Google Ads feed using Advertising Conversion Export

Advertising Conversion Exports define each day using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 UTC. This applies regardless of your Matomo or website time zone. As a result, a ‘day’ in the export may not match your local calendar day.

If you review conversions daily in Google Ads, you may notice lower conversion counts for the most recent day and conversions appearing one day later. This happens because part of your local day has not yet completed in UTC.

UTC exports use UTC midnight as the day boundary, not your local midnight. The further ahead of UTC you are, the larger the chunk of your local day that spills into the next UTC export.

How to interpret export data across time zones

To ensure complete data in your exports, you need to account for the UTC day boundary.

1. The most reliable approach is to wait until the full UTC day has passed before reviewing or relying on the data.
   For example, in Central European Time (CET, UTC+1), waiting until after 01:00 the following day ensures the export reflects a complete UTC day.
2. Alternatively, adjust the date range for analysis. For example, if you are in CET and exporting data for today, the most recent data may be incomplete. Instead, you can export data for the previous day or exclude the most recent hours from your analysis.

Examples

Central European Time

In Central European Time (CET, UTC+1), the UTC day runs from 01:00 to 00:59 local time. Conversions recorded between 00:00 and 00:59 CET belong to the previous UTC day. If you export data for a given day, these conversions will not appear until the next export, even though they occurred on the same local calendar day.

Pacific Time (San Francisco)

San Francisco operates on Pacific Time (PT), which includes Pacific Standard Time (PST, UTC−8) and Pacific Daylight Time (PDT, UTC−7) during daylight saving time.

In Pacific Standard Time (UTC−8), the UTC day runs from 16:00 of the previous day to 15:59 of the current day in local time. This means conversions recorded between 00:00 and 15:59 PST belong to the same UTC day. Conversions recorded from 16:00 onwards fall into the next UTC day.

New Zealand Standard Time

New Zealand operates on New Zealand Standard Time (NZST, UTC+12) and New Zealand Daylight Time (NZDT, UTC+13) during daylight saving time.

In New Zealand Standard Time, this means that conversions recorded between midnight 00:00 and 11:59 NZST are included in the same UTC day. However, conversions recorded from 12:00 onwards fall into the next UTC day.

UTC date boundaries

If your time zone is ahead or behind UTC, part of your local day will fall into a different UTC day. This can lead to incomplete conversion data for the most recent day and conversions appearing in the following day’s export. The behaviour is expected and ensures consistency across all exports.

For real-time conversion monitoring, use Matomo’s Visit Log report. It provides real-time information on individual conversions and visitor actions directly within Matomo.