4 months to go: An important GA4 update
The point at which Universal Analytics will no longer collect data is only four months away.
To help with the transition to GA4, Google are automatically setting up new properties for Universal Analytics accounts from March. You may have seen this warning at the top of your UA view or as a prompt to connect your GA4 property to Universal Analytics: that relates to a detailed help article here.
Best practice advice is typically not to rely on any of Google’s automatic set up features – primarily as GA4 should be treated as an entirely new way of measuring your site interactions, and to take advantage of all of the customised and flexible event tracking it offers. Consequently letting this automated set up take its course may leave your GA4 built out to a less useful standard, and undo some of your existing structures.
What if I already have a GA4 property?
By this stage, the majority of businesses we work with and speak to will have set up a GA4 property that has been configured to transition neatly from reporting in Universal Analytics while benefitting from enhanced event and conversion tracking, custom reporting and bringing multiple web and app platform reporting together into one view.
There is, however, potential that Google’s configuration may impact what has already been set up in GA4 if linked to UA and if you haven’t opted out of some/all of the settings changes by marking them as “already complete“ in GA4’s Setup Assistant.
Additionally, you may have unwanted additional GA4 properties set up for you in your Analytics account if the setting for automatically creating an account isn’t turned off for each property.
If you’re unsure where to check these settings or need further support and guidance on the impact of GA4 on your business, please get in touch: [email protected]
