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Al Jury
May 26, 2023

One month until Universal Analytics sunsets: are you ready?

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Google Analytics Universal Analytics (UA) will phase out on July 1, 2023, meaning there is one month to when UA will stop collecting data. It is important for all businesses to migrate their analytics accounts to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) by that date.

GA4 is the new version of Google Analytics and has been developed for an era when digital marketing will need to rely less on third party cookies and more on first party data. Google Analytics 4 will be able to manage in this first party data world and offers several improvements over UA. Some of these include using machine learning to predict results (especially where data is missing from third-party cookies or tracking data).

Migrating from Google Analytics UA to GA4

All businesses will need to migrate to GA4 before 1 July 2023, which can be a complex process. If you haven’t yet started the process to migrate, it is important to start this straight away, especially if you have complex eCommerce conversion tracking and link into Google Ads. Some of the things that you should undertake to migrate to GA4 are covered below:

  • Start with an audit of your current UA set up. You can use the Google Analytics Data Migration Tool to help you with this.
  • Set up an account for GA4 and determine how you want to collect data. We recommend using Google Tag Manager (GTM).
  • Migrate data from UA to GA4. You can use the Google Analytics Data Migration Tool for this process.
  • Conduct another audit to ensure that data is being recorded in GA4. Note, UA and GA4 work in different ways, so you will see variances in data from UA to GA4.

Help with migrating to Google Analytics GA4

If you need help migrating to GA4, Alpha Digital can help. We offer a variety of services, including:

  • We can help you with all aspects of the migration process, from auditing your current UA setup to setting up GTM.
  • If you’ve already migrated to GA4 from UA, we can audit your GA4 / GTM account and website to ensure it has been set up correctly.
  • We can help you create custom dashboards in Looker Studio or similar tool to display custom views of your GA4 data.
  • We can conduct training sessions on how to use GA4 and the key differences with UA.
  • We can help you backup your UA data into Google Big Query or similar data warehouse tool so that you can continue to look at UA data after it closes.

To learn more about our GA4 migration services, please contact us.

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