Good old Google Analytics…. It’s something you hopefully know and have come to understand and use to better your website performance over the years. The version you’re currently (and hopefully) using, is known as Universal Analyics (UA) and it’s the third iteration of the free analytical platform.

You’re likely to be familiar with the look and feel of the platform by now as, despite constant tweaks and adjustments, GA3 (see what they did there – Google Analytics 3) has been in place for a decade since its inception in 2022.

Just look all things tech, things move on, times change and things get (we hope) better.

Enter GA4 (Google Analytics 4).

What is GA4 and why do you need to know about it?

Google Analytics 4 is the newest analytics platform from Google, and it has been up and running for several months. It’s replacing the old version of Google Analytics and there are a number of large changes, which we’ll be writing about over the coming weeks and months. Some are big; ‘bounce rate’ is gone and is replaced by ‘engagement’, whilst others are more cosmetic.

‘But we love the old version’ we hear you cry! Unfortunately, that old version is no longer going to be gathering data from 1^st July 2023.

All data will instead be going into GA4, rather than your good old, tried, and tested UA GA3.

So, what does that mean for you?

What do you need to do?

GA4 needs to have a different ‘property’ set up in Google Analytics, so you’re going to need to ask your web developer to do this for you and to then update your tracking code. You should ideally be running GA3 and GA4 concurrently over the next 12 months.

Why do you need to take action now?

Simply because the existing analytics account you have will stop receiving data on 1^st July 2023. Although that seems like a long time away, if you want to have a comparison of what was happening at the same time last year (which you do if you’re using analytics effectively), then you’re going to need 12 months of rolling data in GA4 by the time you get to 1^st July 2023.

You guessed it, that means you need to set your GA4 property up now and get it integrated with your website!

We hope better website stats and performance will then be on their way to you!