Goodbye Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics has stopped processing data for many businesses, now is the age of GA4. This has made big waves in the SEO industry.

Goodbye Universal Analytics, hello GA4 (Google Analytics)

Universal Analytics really has been one of the only consistent factors of the SEO world over the past decade. But over the past few years it was announced we would say goodbye to the much-loved platform. The release of GA4 really has sent a shock-wave, with some businesses being confused by it’s nature, some loving the amount of customisation, one thing is for sure, it’s a whole different beast to Google’s Universal Analytics. Originally we were told that Universal Analytics would stop processing data in July, but for most it didn’t and for the Digital Landscope UA account it only stopped the other week! This gave businesses some hope they could keep using. But, as we have advised all our clients, GA4 is what needs to be looked at, UA is only for historic data now.

The spark from Universal Analytics has finally gone out. Also if you’re looking to boost SEO for your Firework store give us a shout! ;)

The Effect on Website SEO Analytics

If you’ve had your GA4 account set up since last year, you’ll be seeing some accurate data. But new user data can still be wildly inaccurate if you set up your store in 2023. It was very unfortunate that Google didn’t offer a way to integrate the old Universal Analytics account to GA4, this makes historical tracking a bit inconvenient as you will have to navigate between two platforms.

For us as a B2C & B2B SEO Agency, SEO and analytics come hand in hand. We need maximum visibility across every SEO tool we use, including Google Analytics 4. We have found some big benefits to using GA4 as well. For a refresher on why Google would throw a perfectly good platform in the bin, this is their explanation for the move back in 2022:

Two and a half years ago, we introduced Google Analytics 4 to address these evolving measurement standards and help businesses succeed. Google Analytics 4 has the flexibility to measure many different kinds of data, delivering a strong analytics experience that’s designed for the future. It allows businesses to see unified user journeys across their websites and apps, use Google’s machine learning technology to surface and predict new insights, and most importantly, it’s built to keep up with a changing ecosystem.

Without a modern measurement solution, you leave essential insights on the table that can impact your business. So now is the time to make Google Analytics 4 your cross-platform Analytics solution. We will begin sunsetting Universal Analytics — the previous generation of Analytics — next year. All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. Given the new Analytics 360 experience was recently introduced, Universal Analytics 360 properties will receive an additional twelve months of new hit processing, ending on July 1, 2024.

Thanks for reading folks, that’s all from us at the Digital Landscope team for this article, if you’d like any more info about this, we’d love to talk website SEO analytics with you. Let’s have a great month!