Google has announced that the incumbent version of Google Analytics, known as Universal Analytics (UA) will be shut down in July 2023.
In a statement, the search firm announced that UA will stop processing new hits in July 2023, marking a full move to the firm’s latest Analytics product, Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
UA has been the standard Google Analytics implementation since its launch in 2012 and the move to GA4 marks a significant change for companies using the product after a decade on the existing platform.
Launching GA4
GA4 has been available since its launch in October 2020, however, in that time has been purely an opt-in product.
GA4 is built on an entirely different tracking mechanism than its predecessor, relying on event-based tracking in place of the incumbent session-based model used by UA.
The new product is said to offer improvements in enabling marketers to track performance across platforms, a departure from UA’s initial focus on web-based sessions.
Moving to the new product
With all support for UA ending in July 2023, marketers are being encouraged to set up GA4 properties immediately.
Both GA4 and UA can run alongside each other, however, marketers are encouraged to begin collecting data using GA4 now so that there is historical data available when the forced switch takes place next year.
