Google Analytics 3 to be deprecated on July 1, 2023 without data migration.

Ryuzaki

Ryuzaki

お前はもう死んでいる
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Public Service Announcement!

Source: https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/prepare-for-future-with-google-analytics-4/

Until July 1st, 2023 you can keep collecting data in Google Analytics 3 (aka Universal Analytics) and then it stops. The data will remain there for 6 months for you to export, and then it's gone.

So it's better to move to Google Analytics 4 sooner than later because we're going to lose the historical views, which always annoys me. Pulling up graphs from "day one" is always a pleasure.

Migration guide: https://support.google.com/analytics?2Fabout/support/&hl=en#topic=10737980
 
Does this mean you can keep the data if you migrate before that?
 
bernard said:
Does this mean you can keep the data if you migrate before that?
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You can export your data, but the data will not be migrated over. That means we'll have discontinuous charts. You'll have a brand new "day zero" of data collection. Or even "hour zero" for whenever you make the switch. You will not be able to import the old data from GA3 into GA4. You're starting fresh.
 
Oof, thanks for the heads up, that sucks. I'm tryina have a real pristine chart in my Analytics so might as well make the switch today to have as long of a history as possible.
 
Ryuzaki said:
You can export your data, but the data will not be migrated over. That means we'll have discontinuous charts. You'll have a brand new "day zero" of data collection. Or even "hour zero" for whenever you make the switch. You will not be able to import the old data from GA3 into GA4. You're starting fresh.
Click to expand...

Google being a bully once again.
 
GA4 is a nightmare. I have given up trying to understand how it works. And now Google wants me to force me into using their crappy upgrade.

I miss Sitemeter, they were the best lol
 
Does anyone know why my GA4's pageviews and sessions are less than 50% of the old GA? It's driving me crazy how annoying GA4 is
 
So I just went through this "process".

The good news is, if you have a basic site without much extra configuration and advanced stuff, and you already use the newer gtag.js and not the older analytics.js, then you don't have to do anything at all other than go through this one-click GA4 Setup Assistant Wizard guide. It took me about 3 minutes to read it carefully and about 5 seconds to find and click the button.

This makes it so your GA3 keeps tracking data (so you can collect everything there till the end of the month/year/whatever) and ignore that time period in GA4, and then make the switch for a full month's data when you're ready.

The point is, both GA3 and GA4 will both be collecting data if you have the gtag.js until GA3 is deprecated.

This is very convenient and there won't be any down time or anything like that. I recommend everyone do this now so you can start building historical data. The more the merrier.

It does migrate over SOME enhanced settings and all but I'm not sure about Views (It did migrate my filters) and all that yet, and I don't know about conversion paths and all that. I'm using this for content sites so I never got that involved with it.

All of this is negated if you have the old analytics.js tag like I do on some other sites. You'll have to set up the new property yourself and switch your JS script in the <head> manually. You won't get both GA3 and GA4 this way, neither.
 
Us on the paid side of things have seen this coming for about a year now.

I know everyone hates it, but this is the shuffling in of a cookie-less era going forward.

Everything to do with privacy and tracking ( as well as other BS stuff like greed and such ) is what is ushering this in.

GA3 and prior are all pretty much cookie based. GA4+ will all be 1st party/event and audience based. It's a lot more than this, but if I were to put it in simple terms and high level, this is the gist. Everyone is scrambling to move to this new way of dealing with privacy and tracking.

I predict at some point Apple will roll out their own analytics solutions too, as well as their own larger and more robust advertising platform ( from what they have now ) too.
 
Hanuman said:
GA4 is a nightmare. I have given up trying to understand how it works. And now Google wants me to force me into using their crappy upgrade.

I miss Sitemeter, they were the best lol
Click to expand...

Another replacement can be Clicky which is still working fine.
 
Just received the email:

uc




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Hello,

I’ve put off the transition to GA4 for what seems like the better part of a year now, but I’m finally getting around to it. I thought I set everything up correctly, but I’m getting conflicting data from my UA property and GA4. My UA property, and conversely, my Mediavine data, show that I’m getting 2,000+ sessions a day, but my GA4 analytics are showing something completely different.

Has anyone else had an issue similar to this? I’m assuming I messed up somewhere, but I'm not quite sure where. If I open an incognito tab and go to my website, it shows up on GA4, so the real-time stats work for me, but apparently no one else is visiting the website. I mainly just want to see how many pageviews I'm getting a day and for that data to be accurate if I'm connecting it to Mediavine.
 
Try go: admin > data streams > configure tag settings > see if there’s a green check mark, if not then click the exclamation point and troubleshoot with tag assistant until it says connected

For blocking yourself on GA4 try: data streams > configure tag settings > define internal traffic
After defining internal traffic, you can go admin > data settings > data filter > test then install
If it’s still frustratingly wonky, there’s analytify. It’s easy but adds plugin bloat, though less than other alternatives.
 
GA4's data is way behind - 8 hours I think. It shows realtime for the last 30 minutes, but after that it's 8 hours behind. So "today" and "yesterday" (until mid-day) is pretty much useless. Might as well not bother checking stats for a given date until a few days after so you know it's complete.

Pretty big step back from UA.
 
Alright, so I’ve spent some time messing around GA4 and I think I have it setup correctly... despite the analytics not matching perfectly between UA and GA4. I installed the headers and footers plugin and pasted my Google tag in there. Does anything need to be done within the search console for this? I also "Enabled connected tags through analytics.js", thinking that would help, but it might not.

Here’s how the page views look between the two properties over a 3-day span:

6/16 (UA): 1,907
6/16 (GA4): 1,814

6/17 (UA): 2,065
6/17 (GA4): 1,965

6/18 (UA): 2,072
6/18 (GA4): 1,850

Is the discrepancy in page views a cause for concern? I just want to make sure everything is looking right on my end before I update anything in Mediavine. Along with page views, I’m noticing a difference in time of engagement. On UA, my session duration is ~35s while the engagement time on GA4 (I’m assuming this is the same as session duration?) is reportedly 1s or less. Lastly, real-time data between the two, such as “users in last 5/30 minutes” doesn’t match at all.

I’m not super well versed in GA4, so maybe these discrepancies are normal, but I would appreciate any feedback regarding the matter!
 
makoloko said:
GA4's data is way behind - 8 hours I think. It shows realtime for the last 30 minutes, but after that it's 8 hours behind. So "today" and "yesterday" (until mid-day) is pretty much useless. Might as well not bother checking stats for a given date until a few days after so you know it's complete.

Pretty big step back from UA.
Click to expand...

Guys, I think I'm going to need to look at GA alternatives again.

I just don't think I can live with GA4 and the data not being real time and the UX being so atrocious.
 
bernard said:
Guys, I think I'm going to need to look at GA alternatives again.

I just don't think I can live with GA4 and the data not being real time and the UX being so atrocious.
Click to expand...
The only workable one is Matomo. I couldn't figure out how to self-host it and their hosted version is pretty expensive. Will only do it if they stop UA working before GA4 is made usable.
 
Strike said:
The only workable one is Matomo. I couldn't figure out how to self-host it and their hosted version is pretty expensive. Will only do it if they stop UA working before GA4 is made usable.
Click to expand...

UA has stopped working for me now.
 
jelf said:
Amplitude is pretty good. I think you get 10 million free events a month, BigQuery export, etc.
but you need to customize it to your needs.

You could also look at:
https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/70357074-40fe-41b1-9766-045a5da7e660/page/LLwSD
"Classic Mode" which has a very similar set of reports to UA.
Click to expand...

Thanks for Amplitude suggestion, gonna check that one out along with cloud hosted Matomo.

As for Lookerstudio, yes, I did know that template and its ok, but lacking some basics like filtering organic. What kills GA4 for me is the full day delay. I just don't like not having up to date data.

I mean, we've had this for 10 years or more. Difficult and imo, unnecessary, to have to learn GA4 from a blogging perspective.

I don't get why Google don't allow some kind of legacy UA for payment. The EU has just passed an agreement that to my understand makes hosting data in the US legal again.

We'll see.

As of know it seems like Google is deliberately spiting the blogging community using the monkey class community. Make it so unusable that those who can afford it choose the paid 360(?) or Big Query solutions.
 
I dunno how all yall have such a good attitude.
We're getting gaslit and manipulated at a level that's just getting insulting.
I feel like one of the frogs in big pot on slow boil except in addition to other frogs in the pot with me there's a bunch of bucket crabs that are hell bent on never noticing anything and really sure none of us should jump out.

Amplitude is the best you're gonna do if you don't wanna examine your own logs.
I've been using cloudflares analytics addon and awstats for a while.
They don't give nice neat broken out session data but its been good enough for me the last few years given I'm to lazy for big data tools most of the time.
 
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secretagentdad said:
awstats
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You know something... If you think about it, It seems a bit crazy that people need to use a 3rd party like Google to get analytics for what's going on within this own website.

Surely something simple as Awstats works.

I use Matomo, formerly Piwik. It's all self-hosted.

Everything else is hosted on our sites, except the analytics? Defaulting to Google's tits has become detrimental to free thinking.

What really is the advantage of using a 3rd party to look at what's going on within your own site? It's very odd when you think about it after stepping back 2-3 steps. The fancy graphics? Meh...

Someone literally could taking AwStats and making a more graphically appealing version if it really does come down to graphics.

Google isn't giving you any special data, and now that keywords are gone it seems useless.
 
CCarter said:
You know something... If you think about it, It seems a bit crazy that people need to use a 3rd party like Google to get analytics for what's going on within this own website.

Surely something simple as Awstats works.

I use Matomo, formerly Piwik. It's all self-hosted.

Everything else is hosted on our sites, except the analytics? Defaulting to Google's tits has become detrimental to free thinking.

What really is the advantage of using a 3rd party to look at what's going on within your own site? It's very odd when you think about it after stepping back 2-3 steps. The fancy graphics? Meh...

Someone literally could taking AwStats and making a more graphically appealing version if it really does come down to graphics.

Google isn't giving you any special data, and now that keywords are gone it seems useless.
Click to expand...

I'm testing Matomo right now, but am I right that it isn't real time updated? Or is that just the cloud version?
 
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