Google Analytics Data Deletion
Google announced Universal Analytics (UA) properties stop on July 23, 2023 and Google Analytics 360 (GA360) properties on October 1, 2023. Businesses will lose data collection and historical data access from UA.
Google Analytics data deletion will affect businesses, as data migration or import from UA to GA4 is not possible and no option to pay for extended access.
The Ultimate Reason Behind Deleting Universal Analytics
The bomb is a huge blow to brands, enterprises, and everyone using Google Analytics. Google plans to abandon the SMB website analytics market due to privacy concerns.
Platform allows data export but it’s not simple, and the exported data is not helpful unless you’re a data analyst. Google does not allow UA data import to GA4, but want people to switch to GA4. They mistakenly believe people do not want to bring historical data.
It is also worth noting that this move will likely push more businesses towards other web analytics platforms and services, as they will have no choice but to find alternative solutions for their data tracking and analysis needs. This could ultimately lead to a loss of market share for Google Analytics in the long-term.
What’s the Issue with Google Analytics 4?
GA4 is supposed to be created with privacy at its core to move towards privacy law compliance—meaning no IP address and no cookies storage. That new version does shift in that direction a little bit, but it is still prohibited in the European Union and hasn’t addressed the Schrems II ruling.
GA4’s interface is even more complicated than the already-complicated Universal Analytics. Other courses span months teaching folks how to use GA. However, it can also take at least 24 to 48 hours to get basic information such as “how many users visited my website from Google?”
The shift to deprecate Universal Analytics and force GA4 feels the popular search engine giant wishes to stop being an analytics software for creators, marketers, and small business owners and move into full-on data science and enterprise.
The Main Differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics
The new data model is the major difference between the two versions. Unlike GA4’s event-based data model, UA had seven hit types via a single hit type ‘event.’
Whenever an ‘event’ was delivered to UA properties, it passed along three parameters (Event Label, Event Action, and Event Category). That’s no longer the case in the new GA4. Now, up to twenty-five parameters could be delivered with a single event, all users defined.
Remember that Custom Dimensions are also no longer available in GA4. You’ll need to utilise parameters to pass similar data to Google Analytics as an alternative. That makes the entire migration to GA4 more complex than altering the tag type in Google Tag Manager.
Unluckily, that central difference in the data model makes the data between GA4 and Universal Analytics incomparable, as its processing and collection method is so massively different.
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