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Good-bye Universal Analytics 👋 Next-steps on Google Analytics

Erman Küplü on March 21, 2022

Not too many people knew the term Universal Analytics a year ago. It has always been known as Google Analytics among all of us, until last year whe...
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James Vanderpump

Great write-up. I saw the notice but will probably take this opportunity to ditch GA for a self hosted privacy focused analytics tool. The nice thing is I will be able to ditch the cookie consent banner.

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ekuplu profile image
Erman Küplü

Yep! That's a great opportunity. Have you seen plausible.io/? They offer a open-source self-hosted option. You can maybe start with that one.

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James Vanderpump

I did, Plausible is definitely looking good, also looking into Ackee.

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Text Decorator

Is there a way that I can back up my data in Universal Analytics?

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Erman Küplü

There isn't any easy and direct way as far as I know. You can simply export every report you want to export. I think that would be the best way to go.

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Stephan Reynolds ✪

Oh no! Too bad that I will lose UA. All the reports that I am checking is there. Can I make the same ones in GA4? Last time I checked it was too different.

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ekuplu profile image
Erman Küplü

You will eventually lose, yes. But I believe GA4 will be even better by then. Google Analytics team keeps shipping new features and capabilities.

UA had too many standard reports. GA4 is more about customization; so you might want the same reports in GA4 but you can definitely make them.

I'm sure soon the template gallery will be launched and community will start sharing UA report templates for GA4.

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Stephan Reynolds ✪

Thanks :)

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Enes EFE

That's a really knowledgeable post thank you so much and We are using "Enhanced Ecommerce" for e-commerce tracking. I don't know is it available with GA4?

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Erman Küplü

Thanks! Almost all e-comm reports are available - however it doesn't have the name Enhanced Ecommerce.

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Rick Delpo

Another big change in GA4 is how their algorithim treats the bounce rate. Prior to GA4 one could spend many minutes viewing only one page and it was still a bounce but under GA4 if the viewer is over 10 seconds on a page it is not a bounce.

Also ps, I only cared about time spent on page so I developed my own tracking app which u can click here to view dev.to/rickdelpo1/removing-google-...

My app does not use a cookie and also I did not care to use Plausible as an alternative.