Google Set a Date to Switch Off Universal Analytics

What was announced

Google has confirmed that standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new data on 1 July 2023.

Paid properties have a later date, several months beyond that.

Previously processed data will remain accessible for a period after the stop date rather than disappearing on the day, which gives time to export.

Until then everything continues working normally, so nothing breaks today and nothing needs doing this afternoon.

Why this is different from previous advice

The newer analytics has been the recommended option since it launched in late 2020, and the advice until now was to start collecting because it was sensible.

That was a reasonable argument and easy to defer, which is why a great many businesses did.

What has changed today is that the choice has a date attached, so postponing has a consequence that can be put in a calendar.

The practical difference for a small business is not urgency this week. It is that the decision has moved from optional to scheduled.

The real deadline is earlier

The point worth taking from today, and it is not the date in the announcement.

The reason to have the new property running is comparison: this month against the same month last year.

Since nothing transfers between the two systems, that comparison only becomes possible twelve months after collection starts.

Which means anybody who wants a full year of comparable data covering the period before the old system stops needs to be collecting by around the middle of this year.

That is roughly three or four months away, not fifteen, and it is the date that should go in the calendar.

Everything else about the migration can be done later and more slowly.

What this means for a small business

• Nothing breaks today or for over a year.
• Start collecting now, if you have not.
• Export your history at some point before it goes.
• Learn the new interface gradually.
• Switch your reporting when you are ready.

The second is the only one with a clock on it. The rest can happen at any point in the next year.

What not to do

Announcements like this generate activity, and most of it is unnecessary.

Do not switch your reporting to the new system this month. You have a year to become comfortable, and reporting from a system you cannot yet navigate produces worse decisions than reporting from the familiar one.

Do not remove the old tracking code. It costs nothing to leave running and it is your history until the date arrives.

Do not pay somebody urgently to migrate. This is a task with a long runway, and prices for it will be more competitive in six months than in the fortnight after an announcement.

And do not assume a supplier has handled it. Ask, and get the answer in writing, because the assumption cuts both ways.

A worked example

A business read the announcement and asked what they had to do today.

They already had the new property running, added when it launched, so their history was accumulating.

Their contact form was not configured as a conversion in it, which was the actual gap and took twenty minutes to fix.

They put two dates in the calendar: one in June to check a full quarter of data looked plausible, and one in the spring of next year to export their old history.

Total time spent responding to the announcement was under an hour.

The business next to them had no new property at all, and for them the honest answer was to spend an hour setting one up this week rather than waiting.

What happens to the old data

The question everybody asks, and the answer is reassuring for now.

Existing data remains accessible for a period after processing stops, which is time to retrieve what you want.

It does not transfer into the new property, and it will not become available there later, so anything you want to keep has to be exported by you.

That is not urgent today and it should not be left until the final month, when everybody will be doing it at once.

A sensible point is any quiet week in the next year: export monthly totals, sources, top pages, and conversions into a spreadsheet you control.

An afternoon, once, and the question is closed permanently.

Telling clients and colleagues

A brief note for anybody who reports to somebody else.

Say it plainly and early: the tool is changing, on a date, not by choice, and the reports will look the same for now.

That is a better conversation held this month than in a year when a report suddenly looks different.

Mention that some figures will not be directly comparable across the change, so nobody reads a discontinuity as a decline.

One short message now saves a difficult conversation later, and it demonstrates that somebody is paying attention.

The counter-case

It is worth resisting the sense that this is a crisis.

Fifteen months is a long runway, the newer system has been available for eighteen months already, and a business with a modest site loses very little by moving deliberately rather than quickly.

There is also a legitimate question about whether to move to this product at all, since other analytics tools exist, several are simpler, and some collect considerably less about individuals.

A business that has never acted on a figure from its analytics might reasonably use this as a prompt to run something lighter, or to count enquiries properly instead.

The forced change is a good moment to ask what you actually need, rather than assuming the answer is the same product.

This week

1. Check whether the new property exists and is collecting.
2. Set it up this week if it does not.
3. Confirm your form and phone are recorded as conversions.
4. Put a date in June to check the data looks right.
5. Put a date next spring to export your history.
6. Tell anybody who reads your reports.
7. Change nothing else yet.

Step two is the only item today with a genuine deadline behind it, and the deadline is the middle of this year rather than the one in the announcement.

The original launch is covered in Google released a new analytics this month.

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