Goodbye, Universal Analytics

Today is the day – it’s really happening.  Today, June 30, 2023, as the sun sets, we say goodbye to Universal Analytics. There may be a few tears, but mostly gratitude. Gratitude to a product that gave me a career, a community, and many lifelong friendships.  To help say goodbye to Universal Analytics, I asked ChatGPT to help me write a fitting tribute:  “As the sun sets on June 30, we bid adieu to our beloved Universal Analytics. Let’s take a moment to appreciate its guidance since 2012 (and Classic Analytics before that). Oh Universal Analytics, you were like a guiding light in the dark depths of website data. Your insights illuminated our path, showing us the way to better understand our users. You were the Sherlock Holmes of analytics,
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GA4 Adds New Conversion Counting Method

For everyone who has complained that conversions are counted differently in GA4 than Goals were in Universal Analytics… GA4 has just released an update you will be interested in. In Universal Analytics, a Goal was only counted once per session. This meant that if you had a Goal setup for a purchase, and a customer made 3 purchases in the same session, the Goal would only fire once. Love it or hate it, that’s how it worked. One could argue that it wasn’t exactly the most intuitive, essentially you should want to celebrate (aka fire a Goal) every time something as big as a purchase happens. But others used this methodology religiously and counted all of their Goal activity on a session level. They only cared about the session conversion
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GA4 Automigration – What you NEED to know

Google is about to start auto migrating your Universal Analytics properties to GA4 for you BUT You actually DO NOT want to do this, for many many reasons.  Already setup GA4? You might still be subject to automigration. Read on for more details about it and how to OPT OUT On Feb 9, Google sent an email saying that they will soon start configuring Google Analytics 4 for you – specifically, starting in March. Aka as early as THIS week… Breaking it down, what does this mean: If you have a Universal Analytics property, but haven’t migrated to GA4, Google will create a GA4 property for you based on many of the settings you have in UA such as your goals, audiences, ads links, users, and more.  But what is
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Universal Analytics 360 Deprecation Date Extended (does NOT apply to Free customers)

In March of this year, Google announced that Google Analytics Universal Analytics (aka GA3) will be deprecated in 2023.  For clients using the free version of Universal Analytics, the tool will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023. For 360 (paying) customers of Universal Analytics, Google had originally said they would stop collecting data on October 1, 2023 (3 months after free properties stopped collecting data). Recently, Google announced that for 360 customers (paying customers) of Universal Analytics, they would be extending that deadline by 9 months to July 1, 2024. This is great news for 360 customers who: IMPORTANT: This announcement DOES NOT change the deprecation date for customers using the FREE version of Universal Analytics! If you are not on a UA 360 contract, your UA accounts will
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Using Site Search data in GA4

If you’re used to analyzing site search data (on site search) in UA, you can do this in GA4 too!  In fact, GA4 actually measures site search out of the box for you via enhanced measurement.  Follow along below to learn 3 ways to access this data.  To take advantage of this data though, there is one small setup step you need to take to see search terms in reporting: register the automatic “search_term” parameter as a custom dimension. Once you do that, you’ll unlock all of the site search data you’ve been craving! To register any parameter as a custom dimension, follow these quick steps: Go to the Configure section Click “Create custom dimensions” Choose dimension name & param value Hit Save Once your “search_term” dimension has collected some
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Point & Counterpoint: Why you should give GA4 a chance

There is a lot of negativity out there when it comes to Google Analytics 4. I get it. It’s a new product that looks, feels, and works differently from what we’re all used to in Universal Analytics. And as many readers would rightly suggest, it’s still missing features. All that being said, I’m here to offer an unpopular opinion: GA4 is actually a great tool. Not only that, it’s a lot more resilient for the future (think privacy, cookies, scaled data models).  I want to address some of the bigger image issues facing GA4 today. So let’s take a look at some of the biggest complaints and counterpoints to why you should go all in on Google Analytics 4.  Point 1: Universal Analytics is just fine, no need to rock
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RIP Universal Analytics, Hello GA4 

Universal Analytics is dead. No, really. It’s just been given a deprecation date. Here’s what you need to know: Google has just announced (as of March 16, 2022) that Universal Analytics will stop collecting new data on July 1, 2023 for free GA customers. That means you have ~15 months to prepare. (Universal Analytics 360 (the paid version) customers will have until October 1, 2023 (~18 months) to switchover). For some months after that date, you will still be able to access your Universal Analytics data, but no new data will be added to your UA views. And then some months after that, Google will shut down access to Universal Analytics altogether.  Now that Universal Analytics has an official sunset date (July 1, 2023!), it’s time to get serious about
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The Ultimate Guide for setting up a Google Analytics 4 property

Are you setting up a GA4 property for the first time? Here are my top 10 must-haves for getting your new GA4 property up and running fast and with settings organized to help you make the most of your analytics data! Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to having a best practice GA4 set up. The first 3 tips are focused on getting your GA4 property enabled and collecting data, and the following 7 focus on ensuring you have a well-organized and robust GA4 property set up.  Creating a GA4 property and collecting data 1/ Create a Google Analytics 4 property This first step is actually really easy. You’ll go to GA, create a new property, and the default will be a new GA4 property. Go
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5 Quick Tips to help you better use GA4

Google Analytics 4 (aka GA4) is so different (looking & acting) that it can be really overwhelming to start digging in. So here are 5 quick tips to help you feel more comfortable and better use GA4. Tip 1: Make the reporting UI work for you! For the first time in GA history, GA4 allows you to actually modify the UI, both the reports themselves and the left nav organization of reports. This means you can do things like build out report collections for specific teams so they have a clear place to go for their reporting needs. Here you can see a collection of my favorite reports: You can do these modifications yourself by navigating to the “Library” section of GA4 (bottom left hand nav when you are in
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