Starting from July 1, 2024, Google will no longer allow access to information from the back-end of the platform for properties using the old version (Universal Analytics).
As of July 1, 2023, Universal Analytics properties stopped processing data. Therefore, to continue recording site activity, it was necessary to migrate to Google Analytics 4, as we all know those who work with data in our businesses.
Although Google was not processing the data, that historical information was available to be read and to download some reports.
What’s new? One year after that date, the information will no longer be available on the platform, through the API, or to be read from the back-end.
This situation also applies to users of Google Analytics 360 properties (the paid version).
If your website has been recording data for years, this information is undoubtedly very valuable as a statistic and you will want to preserve it.
Example of a website with information since 2015.
Sure, here is the translation:
The information is still available!
In this example, you can see traffic spikes during peak seasons, due to actions like Hot Sale and Cyber Monday. Clearly, this is valuable information that we cannot afford to lose.
How do we recommend addressing this problem?
The most recommended approach is to take advantage of the Google ecosystem to download the information in a “friendly” format such as Google Sheets.
If we connect our property to Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) as a data source, we can display dashboards with the data and add filters to view it from the main dimensions, for example, broken down by:
- Default Channel Grouping
- Source/Medium
- Country, region, city
- Device category (Desktop, Mobile)
- Age and Gender
- Hostname and Landing Page
- Event details
Once we have this connection and the filters applied, we can simply “Export” the charts in the chosen format, for example, Google Sheets (we can also download it as a .csv data file for Excel).
More sophisticated options include using the Google Analytics Reporting API to store data in Google Cloud, and then connect it to Google Looker Studio.
Google Analytics 360 users have the ability to export complete data to Big Query and use SQL syntax (database) to access all the information stored in Universal Analytics.
Are you ready to take on the task?
At Resultics, we take care of our clients’ data and propose solutions like this to preserve valuable historical data that allows us to analyze user behavior in the long term.
We are a Performance Marketing and Digital Analytics agency, providing consulting services and implementing solutions to make the most of your data.
Contact us!