Google will delete historic website analytics data on July 1, 2024. From what we see, there are still a lot of organizations that haven’t prepared for this deadline.
So, for the whole stadium: All access to Universal Analytics will be turned off, even read-only access, and all UA data will be deleted.
It’s hard to say goodbye to a longtime partner like UA, but remember that Google Analytics 4 has tracking capabilities that will deliver better (more accurate) data analysis. And it will work and play better with other Google services. So let’s move on.
Here is a framework to help you think through how you should handle the deadline.
Step 1: Determine what data you will actually need access to.
There are lots of reports in UA that could be preserved. But do you really need the data? The more you store, the more time it will take to archive the data.
Step 2: How far back do you need to store data?
For most of our clients, keeping 2 years of data will suffice. Occasionally a longer period is required. The duration of the data stored might affect costs in some way, but it doesn’t really affect the amount of time required to archive the data.
Step 3: Choose the archival method. Here are two primary methods for archiving:
1. Manually export your data outside of Universal Analytics.
You can manually export reports to CSV, TCB, TSV/Excel, XLSX, PDF, or Google Sheets. This can be time consuming and involve hundreds of disparate documents, which is why Steps 1 and 2 above deserve some real consideration.
2. Programmatically migrate your data to a data warehouse.
It’s possible to move your UA data to a data warehouse like Google’s BigQuery (there are many data warehouse options available). Please note, there will be some data storage costs to do this. But in our experience, those costs are a few dollars a month for even large amounts of data. You can use connector tools to make the migration, but it is somewhat technical.
Step 4: Check the archived data.
It is always a good idea to doublecheck that the files properly exported or data properly migrated.
