I’ve started to get questions from clients about the Google Analytics doomsday clock and what it means for them. By now, most everyone is aware that Google Analytics is going through a major change from the legacy Universal Analytics to the new Google Analytics 4 and that on July 1, 2023 all standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data.
While Google has done an excellent job communicating the need to upgrade, I don’t think they have done a very good job at communicating the details and implications of the upgrade. Here is what I understand about the switchover at this time, I will update this blog post as I learn more.
- Through July 1st, sites can continue to collect data using both the old Universal Analytics and the new Google Analytics 4. As of July 1st, Universal Analytics will cease to collect data.
- Data collected using the legacy Universal Analytics will continue to be available for at least six months through your existing UA account. If you wish to keep your old UA data, you should make an effort to export it prior to Jan 1, 2024. There are no plans move UA data into new G4 accounts.
- It is possible to export excel or csv versions of your UA data. I’ll be looking into what other options are available in the future and sharing more information.
- The new G4 dashboard is very powerful and flexible, but almost universally folks I have spoken with agree that it’s much more difficult to use and requires more customization to simply access reports that were available in UA by default.
Questions I am currently investigating:
- Are there Google tools or other third party tools that will allow you to combine historical UA data with more recent G4 data if you wish to track things like daily visitors over a 5 years time period?