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Transition your site analytics to Google Analytics 4

Below are instructions on how to smoothly transition your site’s analytics from Google Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), as well as how to back up your current analytics data for future use.

As Google recently announced, they will be discontinuing Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. Until this date, you can continue to use and collect new data in your Universal Analytics properties. After July 1, 2023, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in your Universal Analytics property for at least six months.

We know your data is important to you, and we strongly encourage you to export your historical reports during this time. 

Some data that might be beneficial for you to back up include: 

  • Pageviews 
  • Unique Pageviews 
  • Avg. Time on Page 
  • Bounce Rate 
  • % Exit 

The above data can be acquired and exported by navigating to Behaviour -> Site Content -> All Pages report in your Analytics dashboard. The instructions to export the report are below: 

  1. Log into your Google Analytics account to see your dashboard 
  2. Navigate to Behaviour -> Site Content -> All Pages to see the Pages report 
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Show Rows dropdown and select a fairly large number (ie. if you have 700 pages on your site, select 1000 rows to export) to show all pages on the report 
  4. Scroll to the top and change the date range of the report to look at least one year back of the current date, with a date range of two years of data also acceptable 
  5. Scroll up to the top and click on Export -> CSV to generate the report 

Learn more 

If your website is running on any of the custom YorkU themes, you don't need to take any further action as this has been updated.

However, if your website is not running on any of the custom YorkU themes, you can begin setting up a GA4 property to start gathering Google Analytics 4 data following the steps below: