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What does "Not Enough History" or "Missing Channel Data" Mean?
What does "Not Enough History" or "Missing Channel Data" Mean?

This article walks through why you're seeing "Data Not Available" or “Missing Channel Data” in a chart.

Seth Bridges avatar
Written by Seth Bridges
Updated over a week ago

"Data Not Available", sometimes represented by “--”, means that we do not have data for the selected date range.

There are two main types of data that may not be available: audience/follower totals and social post data.

Audience/Follower Totals:

Social platforms do not share historical audience/follower data. Therefore, the day a new company is added is the day Rival IQ begins building that data. Some companies you include in your account may already be in our system, so we can share historical audience data for those companies. If you added a new company to our system, we will start gathering audience data from the day you added the company going forward.

Social Post Data:

Social platforms allow us to gather some, but not all, historical data for social posts. Therefore, when you enter a new company to our system you may notice we can provide some historical post data, but not any historical audience data. For specific details about how much historical post data is available for each platform, please read restrictions on historical post data.

To avoid the “Data Not Available” error, hover over the warning message to see the date the data is available, and select a date range after that date. In the example below, the message states the audience data isn't available until Jan. 29th, 2021, so I changed the dates to a period in February.

What does “Missing Channel Data” mean?

“Missing Channel Data” is a message that we display when we do not have the data for one or more social handles associated with a company. We will show a value if at least one social handle has data available. If any channels are missing, we show a warning next to the total so you are aware it does not include data from all of the social handles.

To avoid this error message, hide the missing channel from your reports. To hide a channel, navigate to the companies page and deselect the check mark below the channel you want to hide.

Why am I seeing "Data Not Available" or Warning Triangles in a Cross-Channel chart?

Let's walk through an example to figure out why you may see "Data Not Available" or warning triangles.

In the image below, we see “Data Not Available” on a Cross-Channel Audience chart for John McClain Design during December 2020. Hover over the text “Data not available before Jan. 29, 2021” to see a popover that informs you the company was added to Rival IQ after the time period selected. Select a date range after Jan. 29, 2021 to see the data.

In the image below, we see a warning triangle next to wet n wild beauty during March 2021. Hovering over the warning triangle reveals that the audience total does not include YouTube because the account owner has hidden the subscriber total. Accordingly, the 3.48M cross channel audience total does not include YouTube.

How do I update my data to avoid these warning messages and incomplete data?

To avoid the “Data Not Available” warning, update your date range query to include dates for which we have audience history for your company. The “Data Not Available” will go away when we have gathered enough data to support the date range you are using. Every day we are following the company means we will have an additional day of data towards this effort. For example, after 7 days of following a company, we would no longer show the "Not Enough History" message for reports up to 7 days in the past.

To avoid the “Missing Channel Data” message, hide the missing channel from your reports. To hide a channel, navigate to the companies page and deselect the check mark below the channel you want to hide. The “Missing Channel Data” message will go away only if we receive data from the social platform(s) which are missing data. If a new social handle was added to an existing company, the message will stop showing in recent reports. However, if the social platform stops providing the data, as YouTube does with hidden subscriber counts, the message will appear indefinitely.

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