Download your data from Google Universal Analytics before it’s deleted on the 1st of July 2024!

Over the last year or so, Google has been moving away from its Universal Analytics platform, which has been collecting and analysing data for its users for almost 20 years. GA4 was introduced on July 1st 2023, replacing Universal Analytics in a switch that frustrated many marketers and website administrators due to its new method of reporting, disrupting years of learning and usage of the Universal Analytics platform.

We provided an overview of the implications of the setup and configuration of Google’s new analytics platform, GA4, in this post in 2022. Since GA4 was introduced, Google has been slowly rolling back Universal Analytics’ features and the company’s resources have been solely focused on GA4.

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Google’s next step is to erase all of its Universal Analytics data, wiping the slate clean with historical data from approximately 40 million websites. Therefore, now is the time to download this historical data (so that you can still access this data - albeit in CSV, form - to enable the future analysis of current performance against previous performance).

Analytics are crucial for gaining an understanding of how users interact with your website, optimising marketing efforts and improving user experience. Keeping historic website data is important for several reasons, such as for trend analysis, optimisation/testing and improved decision-making. And it may be the case that you export all of your website’s historical data from Universal Analytics - as we are suggesting - and never do anything with it. However, if you do need to look for seasonal trends or key-event stats within your historical data, or receive requests from your management team regarding how key website pages have performed over the years, you will have the data and the answers at your disposal.

From the Google website: “Starting the week of July 1, 2024: You won't be able to access any Universal Analytics properties or the API (not even with read-only access), and all data will be deleted. While the standard sunset took weeks to complete, the full Universal Analytics shutdown will happen within a week. We know your data is important to you, and we recommend that you export your previously processed data before this date.”

Google provides a step-by-step guide of how to export and share reports in Universal Analytics and you can find it here.