Migrating from Universal Analytics to GA4 — your prep checklist
Universal Analytics stops processing data on 1 July 2023. If you have not started your GA4 migration yet, now is the time. Here is the practical checklist we work through with clients.
Tom BarberGoogle has confirmed: Universal Analytics will stop processing new data on 1 July 2023. That feels far off, but year-over-year reporting requires you to have GA4 running for a full twelve months before the cutover. In practice, that deadline is July 2022 — three months from now.
Why running both in parallel matters
GA4 reports differently from Universal Analytics. The metrics that look the same have different definitions, the conversion model is event-based rather than session-based, and the interface is genuinely different. The only way to have meaningful year-on-year comparisons after the cutover is to have a full year of GA4 data captured before it.
So even though you might not be ready to do your analysis in GA4 yet, you absolutely should be ready to collect data in it.
Your prep checklist
- Create a GA4 property in the same account as your Universal Analytics property.
- Install the GA4 tag alongside your existing UA tag — Google Tag Manager handles this cleanly, or you can use the gtag.js snippet directly.
- Configure enhanced measurement (scroll tracking, outbound link clicks, file downloads, video engagement) — most of it is on by default in GA4.
- Re-create your key conversions as GA4 events. Form submissions, e-commerce purchases, signup completions — every important UA goal needs an equivalent event in GA4.
- Connect Google Ads, Search Console, and any other linked products to the new GA4 property as well as the UA one.
- Set up data retention to the maximum allowed (14 months for free GA4) — the default of two months is short.
- Add the same filters and exclusions (internal IP, bot traffic, dev environments) you had in UA.
What will feel different
Sessions and bounce rate as you knew them are gone. GA4 uses "engaged sessions" — a session is engaged if it lasts more than ten seconds, generates a conversion, or has two or more page views. Bounce rate is now the inverse. It will not match what UA shows you, and that is by design.
Reports are slimmer out of the box. GA4 expects you to build the views you actually use in Explorations rather than relying on dozens of pre-built reports. The flexibility is greater, the learning curve is steeper.
If you would like help getting the new property configured cleanly — particularly the conversion mapping — get in touch before the year-over-year window closes.