Google to sunset Universal analytics in 2023

Google to sunset Universal analytics in 2023

Read time: 2 mins

Written by Josh Westerman

Google has announced plans to sunset the previous generation of Google Analytics, known as Universal Analytics, in July 2023.

After this date, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will be the new go-to solution for monitoring website performance.

Why is Google making this change?

Google has decided to implement GA4 full time due to Universal Analytics’ inability to deliver cross-platform insights, whereas GA4 can measure data across website and apps.

Universal Analytics is quickly becoming obsolete, as it was built for a generation of online measurement secured in the desktop web, independent sessions and more easily observable data from cookies.

GA4 also offers more privacy protection and control of data, which users expect more of in today’s international data privacy landscape, with GA4 also no longer storing IP addresses.

There are key dates you need to mark in your calendars to get your business ready. From July 1, 2023, all standard Universal Analytic properties will stop processing new hits, and from October 1, 2023, all 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits.

Benefits of Google Analytics 4

GA4 is designed to meet businesses’ evolving needs and user expectations to support in driving sales and generating leads. A major benefit of GA4 is businesses can obtain a complete insight across all devices, allowing to get a better picture of the customer journey.

More valuable and actionable data is achieved through GA4’s built-in machine learning, which produces predictive insights about user behaviour and conversions, and automatically surfaces critical insights. This way, it focuses on measuring an end-to-end shopper journey for businesses, and not just individual metrics across devices, pages and segments.

GA4 is also all about “events” which is the main way that data is presented in the new Google Analytics. The new platform will allow businesses to edit, correct and fine-tune the way events are tracked in their analytics. New sub and roll-up properties in Analytics 360 also allow businesses to customise the structure of their GA4 properties to meet data governance needs.

Get up to date with your Google Analytics

At Brand8 PR, we recognise that PR evaluation is far from a mere box ticking exercise, but rather, that it can be used to determine the success of any campaign and inform future PR strategies.

With the introduction of GA4, our proprietary evaluation system, Evalu8, will evolve to ensure clients are receiving in-depth evaluation which reports on the metrics which are important to their business objectives.

If you’re looking for a PR agency in Leeds which takes a holistic approach to PR evaluation, get in touch with our team today.