It’s official–marketers have less than a year to transition to GA4. Google’s Universal Analytics will stop tracking data on July 23, 2023, and websites without a GA4 property will not be able to report on any of the data on their site. Google will store existing data in UA properties for at least 6 months after the transition, but you should be moved onto GA4 well before that.
How Do I Start The Move To GA4 Tracking?
Here’s the good news–if you’re creating a new property from scratch, Google will automatically make it a GA4 tag. You can even create a dual property for both UA and GA4 so you can continue to use UA for the time being and not have to worry about the data no longer being collected.
If you have an existing UA tag from before GA4, you’ll have to head into Google Analytics to apply a GA4 tag alongside it.
Step 1: In your Analytics property, click Admin.
Step 2: Click on GA4 Setup Assistant under Property.
Step 3: Click on “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property.” If you can mark the check box next to “Enable data collection using your existing tags,” do so and click Create Property.
Step 4: If you see a message next to that checkbox that says you’ll need to install new tags on your site, you’ll need to find the code to add to your site under “Tagging Instructions.” If you want to keep your UA data for now, you can just add this code underneath the UA tracking info.
Step 5: Once the property is created and tag is added, you should see data populate in your GA4 property within a few days!
If you haven’t yet, start the migration over to GA4 now so you’re an expert by this time next year!
