Origins

Google analytics started in its current form in 2005, when Google acquired an analytics company urchin. Since then, Googles Universal Analytics has become one of the most used and familiar website analytics tools on the web. Since then, the way it collects data and reports has mostly been unchanged, with the main changes being to the structure of the Google Analytics dashboard.

Why it’s changing

Google is going to retire its Universal Analytics on 1 July 2023, and replace replace it with G4 analytics. G4 analytics measures and reports the data collected differently from Universal Analytics. Universal Analytics data is based on pageviews, all the data they report is based on this. G4 Analytics on the other hand uses events for reporting the data.

Recording event data allows for more actions to be measured than using page view data, meaning that G4 will be able to report more interactions in analytics such as if a video is played, scrolls, site search, file downloads and more, which in Universal analytics would need further set up to be able to track.

Differences

Due to the different ways the 2 analytics report data, the data can not be transferred from one to the other. So when setting up a G4 Analytics for an existing property, it will be like creating a brand new (empty) analytics property.

There will be differences in what data is reported, such as Bounce Rate or Exit Rate, these show when people leave the website, the former when only 1 page has been visited, the latter whenever a session leaves the website.

G4 Analytics on the other hand, has a new metric called Engagement Rate. This measures your engaged sessions, so an engaged user is someone who makes an important action on the website, such as staying there for at least 10 seconds, scrolling through the page.

What you need to do

As Universal Analytics is being retired on 1 July 2023, you will need to have switched over to G4 Analytics by then to continue recording website data. Elements you may want to look at getting set up are:

• Become familiar with the new interface and new reports.
• Set up tracking for any special events (goals or conversions).
• Create any custom dashboards.
• Set up any custom reports.

For more details on the differences, you can check out Google’s help page.