Skip to main content
Digital MarketingSEOWebsite Basics

Moving From Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4

By April 6, 2022April 19th, 2022No Comments

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s newest analytics product that boasts of having a few advantages over Google’s Universal Analytics properties. These include:

  • Privacy-focused and durable for the future
  • Intelligent, using machine learning to unearth insights about the customer journey across platforms and devices
  • Enhanced, seamless integrations with Google’s advertising platforms to optimize campaign performance and drive greater marketing ROI

Simply put, GA4 is the new way of tracking users and actions on your site.

What’s Happening With Universal Analytics (UA)?

The people at Google understand that companies’ website data is very important to the success of their businesses. So, though Google is eventually going to require all Analytics users to utilize Google Analytics 4 for website tracking, they are not immediately discontinuing the use of Universal Analytics.

Beginning July 1, 2023, Google will no longer report data through UA accounts.

 

This means that if a business owner that manages his or her own website analytics or a third-party company that has access to a company’s website analytics, opens the UA window seeking new data, they will begin to see zeros reporting for each metric.

Although users will not see any future data beginning in July of 2023, they will still have access to historic data for a time. However, Google plans to restrict access to historic data collected through UA beginning 6 months after the full implementation of Google Analytics 4–December 1, 2023.

Transitioning From UA to GA4

With talk of new data tracking tools becoming mandatory for Google Analytics users and the imminent loss of data coming with this switch, some companies may be worried about the stability of their website data.

If companies take actions soon, though, they need not worry because they can mitigate the negative impact that this change will have on website data.

What You Can Do

  • Go ahead and create a Google Analytics 4 property and connect it to your website’s Google Tag Manager account. 
    • Adding the GA4 tag to your website will ensure that when Google stops sending data through Universal Analytics you will not miss any data AND you will have a significant amount of historic data to work with (more than a year’s worth of data if GA4 is installed at the time of this blog’s publication).
  • Create reports of historic Universal Analytics data. 
    • After the allotted period, Google will no longer give users access to data acquired through UA codes. If this data is useful to your company–and it is–then you should download much of it into .csv files (or another appropriate file type) on your desktop. With business analytics, more data is almost always an asset. So, you will want to preserve this data by downloading it and storing it somewhere safe.

What You Can’t Do

  • Unfortunately, Google is not currently allowing data from an existing Universal Analytics account to be imported into newly created Google Analytics 4 accounts.

This will make comparing long term data in the future a bit difficult, especially if your company prefers to use third-party reporting programs such as Google Data Studio when reporting website metrics internally or to clients. However, if you are diligent to set up your GA4 account as soon as possible, you can reduce the negative impact that this switch will have on your company.

How to Create a GA4 Property and Connect It to Your Website

If you are familiar with connecting a Universal Analytics code to a website and subsequently creating tags for that Analytics code, then switching to Google Analytics 4 should be a breeze. If you are new to the world of website analytics, then you may need a bit of assistance setting this up.

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up your new GA4 property:

  1. If you have not already created a Google Analytics account for the website in question, create one. If you have already created an Analytics account and are utilizing Universal Analytics, see directions under “If You Have an Existing UA Property.”
  2. After you have created your account, choose the type of property that you are tracking–website, app, or both.
  3. Name your property and select the industry category.
  4. Choose your platform and set up your “data stream” by entering your website’s url and naming the data stream.
  5. Copy the measurement ID and open Google Tag Manager.
  6. Create a new tag within your website’s Google Tag Manager property and select “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration” for the tag type.
  7. Paste the GA4 tag ID in the “Measurement ID” box.
  8. Create and connect a trigger that fires on “All Pages.”

If you have an existing UA property:

  1. Open your Google Analytics account and under “Properties,” select, “GA4 Setup Assistant.”
  2. Name your property and select the industry category.
  3. Choose your platform and set up your “data stream” by entering your website’s url and naming the data stream.
  4. Copy the measurement ID and open Google Tag Manager.
  5. Create a new tag within your website Google Tag Manager property and select “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration” for the tag type.
  6. Paste the GA4 tag ID in the “Measurement ID” box.
  7. Create and connect a trigger that fires on “All Pages.”

This is the basic setup for GA4. If you want to track multiple custom actions, you will need to create tags and triggers for each of them using Google Tag Manager and your new GA4 property.

Website Analytics Experts

At V3 Media Group, we are all about using website analytics to improve our clients’ digital ROI. And because we work with Google Analytics everyday we are familiar with how it works in relation to your site, what these changes mean for website data tracking, and what technical actions are needed in order to ensure your website analytics doesn’t suffer.

If you are looking to improve your website analytics tracking and increase your digital efficacy contact our digital marketing team today for a free consultation.

Free Marketing Consultation