How Do You Retain Universal Analytics Data Before it Expires on July 1, 2024? – Main Street ROI

Learn how to retain your Universal Analytics data before it expires on July 1st, 2024.

Migrating to Google Analytics 4 isn’t a seamless solution due to fundamental differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

Options include exporting report data to spreadsheets, even though there are limitations, or exporting the data to BigQuery, which can be complex and costly.

Choose wisely what data to retain to avoid drowning in unnecessary information. Ignoring the issue isn’t an option, as all data may vanish come July 1st.

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Video Transcription

0:04
so how to retain data from Universal
0:07
analytics before um the data expires in
0:12
Google and uh so July 1st
0:15
2024 um that is likely going to be a
0:19
very very important question um over the
0:22
next six months um it’s going to be a
0:24
really important question in June um
0:26
when everyone has finally come to
0:28
realize they’re going to lose that
0:30
access to all all Universal Universal
0:32
analytics data that they’ve been relying
0:35
on um you know if you’ve got a business
0:37
that’s been that’s older than like a
0:40
year or two and you have all of your
0:43
Universal analytics data that you wanted
0:45
to that you know you refer to back to
0:47
see how how your websites improved
0:49
year-over-year or to check out different
0:53
um different uh Trends in your traffic
0:56
or even just Trends in different page
0:58
traffic um I said July 1 all that data
1:03
is going to become unavailable in Google
1:06
so the big question is going to be what
1:08
do we do with that data how do we save
1:09
it can we migrate it and you know what
1:12
are our options really um so the the
1:15
most obvious question that most of us
1:18
want to do is how do we get our
1:20
Universal analytics into ga4 because
1:23
that would just make life so much easier
1:26
if we could just migrate the data and
1:28
have it all available within this same
1:30
j4
1:31
platform um
1:33
unfortunately Google did not allow that
1:37
um you know there are fundamental
1:38
differences between Universal analytics
1:41
and and Google analytics 4 that there
1:45
really is
1:46
no um you know onetoone relationship
1:49
with old data to new data they look at
1:51
things differently they’re they’re based
1:53
off of different kinds of events um and
1:57
so that there’s just not a way to to
2:00
migrate data from one platform to the
2:02
other which is like I said it’s a real
2:04
bummer because that means the sooner
2:06
that you integrated G4 on your website
2:09
the more data you have in that platform
2:12
so you could have you know over a year
2:13
of data in G4 right now if you started
2:16
early um if you waited you know if you
2:19
if you waited till closer to the
2:21
deadline you may only have about four
2:24
months of data in j4 right now which
2:26
means come July 1
2:30
um a lot of your data is going to be
2:33
gone and so what what do we do with that
2:36
so um I’ve read a lot about this so far
2:40
and there’s really kind of boils down to
2:42
two different options uh one is the
2:44
complicated option um which is people
2:47
are recommending exporting the data to
2:49
another Google product called Big
2:52
query um I’ve done a little bit of
2:54
research on that um it is not something
2:57
that I think is going to be
3:00
would very helpful for a lot of novice
3:03
users and or even potentially with a lot
3:05
of uh even more advanced analytics users
3:08
because this is a different product um
3:10
it does require its own uh learning
3:13
curve and so it’s likely not something
3:17
we’re going to be doing as well I think
3:18
last I looked there was a cost although
3:20
at some point i i s saw someone said
3:22
there was a free version regardless um
3:26
the other option is going to be the more
3:28
simplistic option which is
3:30
exporting your data out into
3:33
spreadsheets um now you’re not going to
3:36
export all data it’s not going to be the
3:39
entire data set you’re only going to be
3:42
exporting report data which means you
3:45
need to you know figure out which
3:48
reports matter the most to you and then
3:52
um when you’re doing your exports you
3:54
know you might have to make a couple
3:56
different exports um for different
3:58
reports but you also have to might you
4:00
might also have to make a couple of
4:02
different exports or different date
4:04
ranges just to make sure you’re getting
4:07
um all of the data that you want
4:10
but um you know looking at things from a
4:14
high level I think it’s if you really
4:17
need all the the nitty-gritty stuff then
4:20
the big query option might be the
4:22
direction you have to go uh for most
4:25
people you know we’re going to care
4:27
about what our traffic has looked like
4:29
in our different
4:31
mediums um since we’ve been collecting
4:33
data so you know organic paid direct
4:36
referral email Etc um we want to look
4:40
know what those have been looking like
4:42
we also want to look at maybe um
4:44
individual page traffic over over that
4:47
duration as well so we can see how
4:50
different pages have that traffic has
4:53
Abed and flow over the years um and then
4:57
those are going to be the two main ones
4:58
that that I’ll probably be looking at um
5:02
there might be some other ones in there
5:04
that are important I think that’s
5:05
something we’re going to be looking into
5:07
more um you know as I think we’re all
5:10
gonna be faced with what is the
5:13
uh how do how what’s the best amount of
5:16
data to capture without just downloading
5:20
massive amounts of reporting data that
5:23
we’re not going to use let’s let’s grab
5:24
the stuff that is actually useful is
5:27
helpful um and that we don’t have to
5:29
sort through a bunch stuff to figure out
5:31
so um those are unfortunately the the
5:35
the big three options right now
5:37
obviously you can also just ignore it
5:39
and after July 1 all your data is just
5:41
going to disappear into the Oblivion um
5:44
from what I’ve heard not even it won’t
5:46
even be available via apis so it’s not
5:49
like it the reporting Tool’s gone it’s
5:51
the all the data should be gone um so
5:56
we’ll have to learn a little bit more um
5:59
as time goes on um but those are the
6:02
three we’re looking at right
6:05
now