How real-time identification really is

A pageview is sent to the collection endpoint on your own domain and stored as a visit almost immediately — that part is a single request. The company resolution is a second step: the connection is classified, looked up against reference data, and the resulting organisation is attached to the visit.

In normal operation those steps complete within seconds of the pageview, so an active session usually appears in the live feed while the visitor is still on the site. The live view is built for that: it shows sessions as they happen, and the company badge fills in once resolution returns.

Two mechanisms can stretch the gap. First, resolution runs against an external data service, so its response time and rate limits apply; when many visits arrive at once, lookups are queued and processed in order rather than dropped. Second, a session's full picture only exists once the session ends — page count, duration and the exit page keep updating while someone is reading.

So expect two different clocks: a company usually appears within seconds, but engagement metrics for that visit settle after the session finishes. A visit that resolved as anonymous is not retried indefinitely — if the connection carries no organisation, waiting longer does not change the answer.

The useful version of real-time is not a stopwatch, it is a shorter reaction loop. When a target account reads your pricing page this morning, an alert today lets you reach out while the research is still fresh — which is a materially different conversation from following up next week.

There is no instant guarantee for every visit, and any vendor promising one is describing a best case as a rule. Bursts of traffic, upstream rate limits and provider incidents are real, and the honest design answer is a queue that catches up rather than a number that quietly drops visits.

The same honesty applies to coverage: real-time only ever applies to visits that can be resolved at all. Connections without a corporate identity stay anonymous no matter how fast the pipeline runs.