You Will Lose All Website Data
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Sorry to scare your mid-morning coffee but Google Analytics will SUNSET. This means bye bye. Sayonara. Adios.
If you don’t upgrade, you may experience an epic fail moment. You will feel as if the stock market is tumbling all around you or an earthquake jolted you mid-Zoom…..
We don’t you want you to experience those feelings unnecessarily. So read on and forward this email to folks you want to help!
What’s Happening
Given the hundreds of exabytes of storage Google uses to store everyone’s Google Analytics Data, it’s time to start over. They are wiping the data centers clean of GA data in Q4 of 2023. That means you will not have any meaningful year/year insights, nor any growth trends to brag about at your board meeting.
UNLESS
You turn on GA4 right now. The two Analytics versions will run in parallel until the Classic Google Analytics fully sunsets sometime in Q4 of 2023. Enabling GA4 now will mean this time next year, you will have collected Yr/Yr data for November and December. You will not be able to access this data anywhere else.
The new version of GA4 looks very clean and simple. GA4 is fundamentally different. Rather than looking at the user level, GA4 is focused on audiences. It is intended to empower businesses at a more sophisticated level of analytics and allows marketers to segment different user flows with custom messaging.
Why do you think you’re getting this email right now? 😉 JK. Sort of.
Here’s How to Do It. It’s Free.
It takes less than 15 min to implement! Below is an outline of the necessary steps – We’re happy to walk through it to ensure we have this properly set up!
Analytics – Creating the GA4 Property
- Analytics -> Settings -> Create Property (not account)
- Name Property -> Fill out about business info -> hit next
- Create Datastream -> web
- Web stream details -> choose existing on page tag -> copy the measurement ID -> open tagmanager.google.com
Analytics – Linking to Google Ads
- Analytics -> Select the new GA4 property you created -> Product Links -> Google Ads Links
- Choose account you manage -> Submit
Google Tag Manager – Creating a new tag
- In Tag Manager -> “Add a new tag”
- Choose Tag Type -> “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration”
- Click “Add Trigger” -> Choose All Pages -> “Add”
- Submit then Publish
Let me know if you need assistance setting this up! Classic Google Analytics and GA4 can run side by side until the sunsetting, so I want to make sure we take advantage of this golden window.