Have You Converted Your GA to GA4?

Did you know that Google was invented as early as 1998? Ever since then, Google has become the number one search engine platform in the world. It has far surpassed all other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and so on.

This is not to mention that Google is advanced enough to have all sorts of useful tools, most notably Google Analytics, also known as GA. But have you recently converted GA to GA4? If not, you may come across some serious issues.

But what is so special about the latest version of Google Analytics and why is it important to make the switch? Is there any difference between the old version and the new version? Keep reading and learn more about Google Analytics, how it works, and why the new fourth version is so important.

What You Need to Know About Google Analytics

Before we dive into the details of GA4, let’s first take a closer look at Google Analytics in general and see why it is so important. As the name suggests, this helpful tool is all about internet analytics. It is particularly helpful for those who are growing their own website or online brand.

This is because Google Analytics can be used to keep track of all sorts of important marketing data. Pretty much every online marketing guide will advise you to use this Google tool simply because it is so helpful. More importantly, it can help you improve your website in ways that will attract more traffic and, of course, more business.

Google Analytics is particularly helpful for making sure that your website is up to par in terms of search engine optimization, also known as SEO. SEO is of utmost importance for any website. Without basic SEO practices, it would be impossible to make your website a success.

This is because if your website doesn’t use SEO, Google will naturally rank it very low. As a result, it might end up on the 20th page of Google where no one would ever think to look. This, of course, wouldn’t be very helpful for your website, especially if you’re trying to sell products or services.

The Details

On the other hand, if you start using basic SEO practices, you will find that, little by little, your website will start to rank higher on search engines and will start to generate more traffic as well. Google Analytics is designed to help you determine how effective your current SEO strategies are and what you can do better to attract more people to your website.

Besides that, Google Analytics is also very good at keeping track of various marketing data and other information. This makes it easier to figure out how often you sell products, how many people come to your website on a regular basis, what parts of your strategy might be weak, and so on.

All of these different tools combined make it easy to take charge of your website and improve it as much as possible. But what does the new version of Google Analytics have to do with anything?

Making the Switch From GA to GA4

Making the switch from GA to GA4 is more important than you might expect. But can’t you just stick with the version you’re currently using? Unfortunately, this won’t be possible.

This is because the new version of Google Analytics will be replacing Universal Analytics entirely. But what exactly does this mean for you? It means that after a certain point, your current version of Google Analytics will no longer work as it’s supposed to.

In particular, the tool will no longer register views, traffic, or any other important pieces of data. This, of course, will essentially render the old version useless. For standard Universal Analytics tools, this will happen on the 1st of July in 2023.

For 360 Universal Analytics, on the other hand, this will happen on the 1st of July in 2024. As you can see, you have quite a lot of time to make the switch. However, switching at the last minute is not a very good idea.

Google recommends that people make the switch sooner rather than later because it will be easier to transfer important marketing and SEO data than if you do so at the last minute. If you wait too long to make the switch, there won’t be much history or data left to transfer and you’ll more or less have to start from scratch.

What You Need to Know

But what should you know about making the switch from GA to GA4? You will have to consider several factors when making the switch if you want to make sure that all of your important information is kept safe. For example, you will have to create a new property and data stream for Google Analytics 4.

This may sound like a lot of work but it is a very low-effort task. Once that’s done, you should collect any website and app data that you may have so that you can save it and use it later, if necessary. Turning on Google signals is something that you won’t want to forget about.

This simple task is necessary for reporting and remarketing. Without it, you would be missing out on a large chunk of important marketing data. There are also some other low-effort tasks that you will need to take care of such as setting up conversions, adding extra users, and so on.

You also shouldn’t forget to consider the structure of your account, but this might not even be necessary if you are only dealing with one website. If you are an advertiser using Google Analytics, you may need to do a few different extra tasks. In particular, you may need to migrate the links for your ads and you may also need to migrate your target audience data.

Migrating Data

You will also need to figure out how to migrate your conversions and then use those conversions for the new version of Google Ads. While all of this sounds like a lot, most of these tasks are relatively simple. Getting it all done sooner than later will make everything much simpler in the long run, especially when Google deactivates the old version of Analytics and switches permanently to the new version.

In some cases, there may be a need for advanced changes and setups when making the switch. This is especially true if you are an e-commerce business or if you need to take custom events or the import of special data into account. But other than that, making the switch should be pretty straightforward and you will find it to be worth it.

The Benefits of Google Analytics 4

You might be wondering if there is any difference between the old and new versions of Google Analytics. You might think that they will be exactly the same, but this is not quite true. While Google Analytics 4 does indeed share many similarities with the old version of this online tool, there are quite a few new tips and tools that make it much better and more efficient.

In particular, GA4 is ideal for collecting data from several different streams such as website data and mobile app data at the same time. That way, it is much easier to see which stream of data is doing better and what factors your target audience might prefer. This, of course, is important because it can allow you to dedicate your resources more to your website or to your app, depending on how they are both performing.

The new version of Google Analytics will also have better privacy settings and controls. For example, a simple addition such as cookieless measurements can make all the difference. The new version even has amazing predictive capabilities.

This, of course, is very important for predicting how certain types of data will change and what you can do to make sure that your analytics remain in your favor. In short, the latest version of Google Analytics will make it much easier to handle all of your important data and information so that you can more easily make your website a success.

All About Google Analytics

Making the switch from GA to GA4 is important and not as complicated as you might expect. Making the switch sooner rather than later is essential for migrating all of your most important data and other information. As long as you do that, it should be smooth sailing from there.

To learn more about it, contact us here.