Google Analytics Universal is Going, Going… Gone!
News — On July 1st, 2023, Google Analytics Universal will be no more. What does this mean for your business? It means that you will no longer be able to see any of your website’s performance data, and by the end of 2023, you will no longer be able to access Google Analytics Universal at all!
Posted by Trish McLachlan
11.01.2023
On July 1st, 2023, Google Universal Analytics will be no more.
What does this mean for your business? It means that you will no longer be able to see any of your website’s performance data, and by the end of 2023, you will no longer be able to access Google Analytics Universal at all!
You’ll lose all of your website data – Audience, Acquisition, Conversions, etc.
Without going too deeply into the crux of the ‘why’ Google has decided to end Universal…they needed to develop an alternate platform that addressed the privacy and attribution challenges it has struggled to navigate over recent times. The new Google Analytics 4 (GA-4) aims to solve these problems with more flexible tracking, data, and setup ease.
It is super important to get the GA-4 code onto your website so that your sources, channels, page view tracking, and conversion events are all set up now on the new property, and there’s no gap in data when the Universal Analytics ends.
Switching as early as possible will mean you’re collecting data in GA-4 before your Universal Analytics data disappears. Setting up GA-4 now doesn’t affect your existing Universal Analytics – the two can exist parallel to each other right up to the July 1 deadline.
There is a whole gamut of benefits with the new GA-4 platform – customer journey tracking, more detailed audience definitions, more detailed channel attribution data, more accurate engagement tracking and metrics, to name a few.
What you need to do to set up Google Analytics 4 today:
Go to your Google Analytics page
You’ll see a prompt at the top of your page to get started. If you don’t see this, go to your Admin settings, Property column, and view
Click Create Property and follow the prompts to create your new Measurement ID.
Here is a really helpful video tutorial from Benjamin at Loves Data to help you set up your GA-4 property:
And then, be sure to set up your Conversion Events so that you can measure lead conversions for your business. Meaningful data. Data that shows you the customer journey through the consumer behaviour process. Here’s another really useful resource to set up GA-4 Conversion Events tracking using Google Tag Manager
