Now that the end of Universal Analytics is firmly in sight, businesses need to export their historical data from the platform before time runs out. Thankfully, the latest data tools and technology make the process easy and stress-free. However, there are some important things to keep in mind in order to ensure your historical records are accurate and complete. Once Universal Analytics shuts down, there will be no way to recover historical data from the platform, so it's worth taking the time to make sure the process is done correctly. Thankfully, the experts at Calibrate Analytics are here to share the top three things to prioritize when planning your historical data export from Universal Analytics.
Timing
Google recently announced that users would have the ability to export historical data from Universal Analytics until July 1, 2024 (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13510998). Originally we were under the impression that the shut-off date would be at the end of 2023, so the extension seems to be a positive update. Before extending your planned export, you will want to consider your data-retention settings. If you have your data retention set to not expire cookies in Google Analytics Universal, then you can plan your export any time prior to the newly announced shut-off date. If you are deleting your cookie data based on one of the presets, and you would like to store as much data as possible, you will likely want to plan your export for soon after the system stops collecting data on July 1, 2023.
Schemas
As an example of how the data-retention/cookie-deletion setting impacts your ability to export historical data, consider the following two schemas.
Schema One is our traffic and performance schema, which provides information about where your visitors are originating from, as well as the corresponding conversion metrics. Cookie data is required to provide this schema in full.
Traffic and Performance — With Cookie Data
Dimensions
- Date (date)
- Campaign (string)
- Source/medium (string)
- Channel (string)
- Ad content (string)
- Device category (string)
- Currency code (string)
Metrics
- Page views (integer)
- Session duration (float)
- Sessions (integer)
- Bounces (integer)
- Transactions (integer)
- Transaction revenue (float)
- Item quantity (integer)
Schema Two is our basic traffic and performance schema that is used after the cookie deletion has occurred.
Traffic and Performance — Without Cookie Data
Dimensions
- Date (date)
- Campaign (string)
- Source/medium (string)
Metrics
- Sessions (integer)
- Transactions (integer)
- Transaction revenue (float)
- Item quantity (integer)
You can see that our ability to pull granular Google Analytics reports after the cookie data has been deleted is dramatically diminished. If you are deleting cookies and have planned to delay your historical data export, you may want to consider changing your retention settings now to not expire the data, or moving the project timeline up to soon after the shut-off date.
Transformation and Visualization
Many of the companies we speak with will not have the ability to compare year-over-year metrics in Google Analytics 4 when Google Analytics Universal is shut off on July 1, 2023, and nearly all of the companies we speak with do not have the full year of 2022 in Google Analytics 4. If you or your organization falls into one of these categories, all is not lost. However, you will need to connect your GA UA data with your GA4 data using a database such as Google
BigQuery and a data visualization application such as Looker Studio or Microsoft Power BI. While Google BigQuery is not free, the monthly costs associated with hosting and visualizing Google Analytics data should be very affordable for most organizations.
Helpful Resources
For those who want to complete the process on their own, here are the step to follow:
- Transfer your GA UA data to BigQuery using Launchpad
- Merge the GA UA data with GA4 data in BigQuery using our step-by-step tutorial
- Connect your net dataset with a visualization app such as Looker Studio
However, if you don't have the time or an available analyst on your team, the experts at Calibrate Analytics would be happy to help. We can set up your data transfers, configure your database, and connect your data to the visualization apps of your choice. That means you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the benefits of having complete historical records to guide your business going forward.
