Google recently announced that it will be discontinuing Google Universal Analytics and moving to its new Google Analytics 4 platform (G4) on July 1, 2023. For most companies, Universal Analytics is probably what they’re using today.

Why Is This Important?

This is very important, because as of July 1, 2023, your current Google Analytics account will no longer collect data, nor will it transfer to G4. You then have six months (slightly longer if you have a paid GA account) to download historic data before it goes away completely! 

In other words: In order to do year-over-year comparisons or a 12 month or greater trend in your key data points (like traffic, conversions, events, goals, or marketing performance) you will need to implement G4 before July of this year.

How Do I Know If I Have Google Universal Analytics?

If you created your Google Analytics account before October 14, 2020, then you most likely will be using Universal Analytics. 

If you’re not sure when your account was created, you can check what version you’re using by looking at your Google Analytics property ID.

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  Universal Analytics property IDs start with UA and end with a number (UA-XXXXXXXXX-1).
• Google Analytics 4 property IDs have only numbers (XXXXXXXXX).

You can find this by logging into your analytics account and going to your account or individual property. 

Why Do I Care About Having YOY Data?

Being able to compare year-over-year data is critical in understanding how seasonality impacts your business, how previous marketing programs performed compared to similar programs today, how changes to your site have impacted key metrics like conversion rate, SEO, customer loyalty, etc.

Historic data trends can also show you how your customer behavior has changed over time, what content performs best, how your merchandising mix has changed, and much more!

In other words, you really, really don’t want to lose this information. By ensuring that you’re tracking a full year of data in G4 you’ll save your marketing teams a lot of time and effort in doing these comparison’s offline.

Why Is Google Changing?

Google is switching to G4 for a number of reasons. Some of the most significant are the preparations for moving to cookieless sites and advertising, new definitions about events/pages/conversions, and cross device and platform measurements (think apps, website, etc.), and addressing data controls stemming from legislation from the EU, California, and other areas.

Implementing G4

In order to implement G4, you will need to create a new G4 property in your GA account. We then recommend using Google Tag Manager to deploy your new G4 tags on your site. Events, goals, and any custom data collection that you currently have in GA Universal will need to be set up in G4, since these and historical data will not migrate with the switchover.

Remember, you can’t just create the G4 account in your analytics account and have it work out of the box. You will need to add the G4 code to your site, either manually or via a tag manager like Google Tag Manager.

This will be a bit of an issue with some CRMs, since many have a built in field that allows you to just enter your Universal Analytics account ID and skip the code implementation. These won’t work if you just use a G4 ID, at least not yet.

Be Prepared for Different Reporting

The G4 reporting interface is radically different from what you’ve become accustomed to in Universal Analytics. The reports are named differently, the metrics are different, and frankly sometimes difficult to find. We highly recommend that you spend some time getting familiar with the interface before you are forced to use it permanently. 

For example, conversion rate doesn’t currently exist in G4. Seriously. You have to either pull the data offline and calculate via spreadsheet, or set up a Google Data Studio dashboard, and calculate it there.

Because the reporting is so drastically different, we have been recommending that you start creating Data Studio reports and use those, rather than dig for the data that may or may not exist in G4.

We Can Help

If implementing G4 seems overwhelming, don't worry. We can help. Contact us today for an estimate, or to learn more about how we can help with your analytics, and marketing. 

Whatever you do, don't wait! Whether you use our team or internal resources, we highly recommend that you begin switching over today.