Google’s Universal Analytics Will Be Obsolete by Next Year. Are You Ready?

June 10, 2022
Close-up of laptop with Google analytics page open on the screen.

Did you know that your company’s Google Universal Analytics account will be obsolete by July 2023? If you have accessed your Google Analytics in the past year, the answer is most likely yes. But do you understand how critical it is to change your Google account starting July 2022? Based on our conversations with economic development and tourism clients over the past few months, we would guess that the answer is a mixed bag of yes and no.

We’re here to tell you that you better start heeding these messages from Google.

According to Google, “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 three months of new hit processing, ending on October 1, 2023.”

This means that how you are measuring your current digital marketing efforts will no longer work by July 2023. After July 1, 2023, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in your Universal Analytics property for at least six months.

As a core tactic to understand how your marketing programs are working, ensuring that your data and analytics are pulling correctly are key to help set you up for success in your conversations with your board, stakeholders and internal team.

Have no fear, as Google has created another measurement tool known as Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which was created to address privacy and data collection concerns that have been plaguing current Universal Analytics accounts. 

GA4 is Google’s solution given the international data privacy landscape, and answers the desire from companies to understand how websites are performing even as privacy concerns become more top of mind.

While we realize that many of our clients have an IT department already leading this transition, DCI has a team of experts who are ready to help with the transition in case your team lacks the expertise to handle this migration. While GA4 has been in Beta since 2019, Google introduced it to the world in late 2020. Since then, our DCI team has been testing out GA4 and meeting with Google to prepare ourselves to help clients successfully migrate their data.

If you’re interested in receiving a proposal from DCI to manage this transition, please let us know.  We will send you details on what our basic program includes as well as recommendations for add-ons after assessing your current Universal Analytics setup to ensure your reporting is as robust as possible.

We can install GA4 starting June 2022 and migrate your historical Universal Analytics data to meet the recommended deadline from Google. It is our firm recommendation to have GA4 installed by July 1, 2022 and then data migrated from UA to GA4 by the end of July. 

Please feel free to reach out to Susan Brake at susan.brake(at)aboutdci.com if you have any questions or would like to receive a proposal from our team.