Since our latest news on Google Analytics 4 and Data Retention in GA4 there has been a lot of developments in the world of Google Analytics. Below, you will find the most important updates and announcements by Google about their analytics tool.
- Google Analytics 4 can now be linked to Display & Video 360, Google Ads and the Google Search Console.
- What has been the “View” in Universal Analytics, is the “Subproperty” for GA4. As of now, only GA360 Clients are able to use these which means an important and widely used feature won’t be available to a lot of the companies that use Google Analytics.
- There is a new auto-suggest function in Google Analytics which facilitates finding data and information within the tool.
- In GA4 there are new Domains available for the collection of visitors’ data. EU located visits can be set to only be collected from EU based servers. This is another step into the direction of increased data privacy, however, according to what we know today, this is not yet enough to be GDPR-Compliant. We are looking forward to seeing how Google evolves further.
The biggest announcement and surprise for many of us is that Universal Analytics will reach end of life on the 1st of July, 2023 and from that moment will no longer collect data. This means GA4 will be the only available and official Google Analytics Version to use. Although GA360 Clients have a bit more time (until the 1st of October, 2023), all clients should start migrating their UA Setup to GA4 to make sure data is already collected. The data in Universal Analytics will be available for at least another 6 months after July 2023 but sooner or later, it will not be accessible. We are waiting for further information from Google in this regard.
We believe that in the future many companies will work with Google Analytics 4. Especially as the French Data Protection Authority recently declared a Server Side Tracking Setup with Google Analytics as a possible GDPR-Compliant setup. However, we still recommend every company look at their individual requirements for a Web Analytics Tool to make sure to get the best fit for them. You may read our article about a few great options on providing data privacy compliant solutions.
We are certainly happy about being contacted in case you’d like to do a tool evaluation according to your requirements or if there is any need of assistance for the migration of Universal Analytics to GA4.
