Your historical Google Analytics data is going away soon
This second wave of urgent action for your Analytics account is going to be on top of you before you know it.
I recommend you act Sooner than Later, because after July 1, 2024, it’s very likely to be too late, and every project we do on UA Historical Data Preservation takes time, and our time is a finite resource.
Four ways to tackle this:
Option 1: (the option we don’t do) is to set up a Google BigQuery account and export all the historical GA-UA data into it. You will pay for the setup process, and for each query you want to run. You will also need access to a data scientist or database expert to assist to pulling data you need to generate a report, unless you have that expertise yourself.
Option 2: Make a finite list of the types of reports you want to use, and we build them for you using downloaded data inside Google Looker Studio, a free reporting platform. You’d pay for our work and that’s it. The access to the reports and the data behind each one would be saved in your own Google account, which is probably free (or cheap) and governed by your account usage agreements with Google.
Option 3: You DIY this.
Option 4: You ignore historical data and hope nobody ever asks you to compare Analytics results over time (or hope you never need it).
About Option 2 – Reports Built Using Downloaded Data:
What you could do with the reports:
- Change the format of the report, so long is it uses the same data set. You can use visuals like bar charts, tables, graphs, pie charts etc.
- May be able to specify a drill-down dimension per chart (subject to data capacity limits).
- View any given date range in the data, and even compare date ranges like WoW, MoM, YoY or otherwise.
- Decrease granularity of date ranges, switching from a Daily view to Weekly, Monthly or Yearly.
- Use dashboards and charts for printing or other display applications. We will usually format reports to 16:9 ideal for PowerPoints or printing to A4 Landscape, or we can make any general page design you like.
- View the raw data from any chart or dashboard element.
What you can’t do:
- Specify NEW ways to drill down into the data, for example: for a chart that has Conversions by Source and Medium that is from downloaded data, you would NOT be able to subdivide that by Age and Gender or any other segment unless you specified this when you hired us to build the report. It will affect the quote, and not all solutions are possible.
I recommend you engage us soon if you want this done in time.
