The Mediavine Dashboard syncs daily to your Google Analytics. When it does that, it pulls the top 100 posts by visits for that day.
This is not a live sync. It will not update once it pulls that data, it will just pull fresh data for the next day's reporting with the statistics for that day. On day one and day two you will likely have slightly different top posts, with some posts falling off of the top 100 and new ones making an appearance.
This means that when you are looking at one day of data in your dashboard, the top posts will have accurate numbers displayed that should match up very closely with your Google Analytics.
If you are looking at a range of days, things may not match up.
That is because during any given day, posts may fall off of the top posts that we pull. That means we are not getting the pageviews for that page.
For example:
If your BLOG POST ABOUT PINE TREES was in the top post reports for day one with 1500 pageviews and day three with 1200 pageviews, in the dashboard that post would show a total of 2700 pageviews over the three day span.
In Google Analytics, it would show more than that over the same three day range because it ALSO includes the pageviews from day two, which weren't pulled into the dashboard sync. Let's say it only got 300 pageviews that day so it won't make it into the top 100.
Therefore, the Mediavine Dashboard will show 2700 (1500 + 1200), while your Google Analytics will show 3000 (1500 + 1200 + 300).
Over a range of dates, Google Analytics will show more.
We also pull in revenue the same way. We're only tracking revenue for the pages that made it into your top 100. On a single day, revenue will be accurate, as well as Page RPM.
However, over a range of time, a page may have fallen out of your top 100 and therefore its revenue will not be added to the range.
Therefore, we ask that you use Page Analytics, RPM, and Revenue as estimates that should be used to help you make better decisions, but not to base your business on them.
For example, don't use them to figure out HOW to pay people as this is not exact.