Picture this: It’s September 2024 and your company’s leadership team is pumped to start planning the next phase of its marketing efforts. You’re asked to share website data and valuable insight into long-term trends, seasonal variations, and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies over the past five years. That historical data is integral to planning and executing your 2025 marketing efforts, but no sweat, you’ve got it covered.
When you pull up Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the current version of Google’s analytics tool, you realize that your GA4 data only goes back a year or two. GA4 only collects data from the point at which you switched to it, of course, and your company switched in mid-2022.
But as you pull up GA4’s predecessor, Universal Analytics (UA), to grab data from 2019-2022, your stomach drops. The data is missing. Where did it go, and can you still access it somewhere?
Nope—you’ll have to take an L on this one, because your data is long gone.
Don’t let this happen to you. All customers will lose access to the Universal Analytics interface and API starting on July 1, 2024—and all your precious historical data will be lost. That’s why you need to make moves now to save your data and organize it in a way that will be valuable to you and your company in the future.
How to Collect Universal Analytics Data Before It’s Too Late
Now that you know how essential it is to grab that data before it’s gone, it’s time to think up a strategy for pulling what you need and arranging it in a way that will work for you and your team. You might ask yourself questions like:
- How do I get historical data out of UA?
- What data do I really need?
- Do I only need raw data?
- How am I supposed to find the specific metrics I’m looking for in that raw data?
With so much information available in UA and so many ways to format it, answering those questions can feel overwhelming. That’s why friends don’t let friends lose data.
There’s still time to ensure that you won’t have a black hole in the middle of your website’s historical data, and Element is on call to assist. Our team can help you determine what historical data is most important to you, then collect and consolidate it for easy use in the future.
Secure your past to help inform a powerful future—get in touch with us by April 15, 2024, and we’ll take care of the rest.
