From March 2023, webmasters should create their GA4 properties, or Google plan to automatically configure them for you.
For months now, Google have been telling us that their Universal tracking will stop processing data on 1st July 2023, but they have now sent out an email telling webmasters that, if they have not migrated their original property settings to a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property by March 2023, Google will do it for them reusing existing site tags.
Do not worry if you have not yet received the email, as it’s in full below:
Universal Analytics standard properties will stop processing data on July 1, 2023. To maximize historical data and to ensure that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) meets your specific needs, we recommend you make the switch to Google Analytics 4 now. This will give you the opportunity to customize the setup including using the latest site tag.
For any customer who does not set up a GA4 property with basic settings, starting in March, we will configure one with a few basic settings consistent with the existing Universal Analytics property; this includes certain conversion events, Google Ads links, and existing website tags.
For Universal Analytics customers whose websites are tagged with gtag.js or analytics.js (including through tag management systems like Google Tag Manager), we will create a connected site tag that will reuse existing tags when possible to send traffic to the new GA4 property. If you do not wish to have a GA4 property created and configured based on your Universal Analytics property and existing tags, you may opt-out.
Google
Opt-out. If you don’t want Google automatically creating GA4 properties for you, it is possible to opt-out via the instructions in this link.
Google Analytics is vital for analysing the performance of a website, particularly if you run SEO campaigns, PPC campaigns, and other forms of online marketing.
According to data, around 28.1 million websites use Google Analytics. However, the number of websites using Google Analytics 4 pales in comparison. It’s reported that only 5.8 million websites are running Google Analytics 4, although this figure is only going to increase as a result of Universal analytics being turned off from 1st July 2023.
In other news, the search engine has recently announced that it has removed redundant keyword recommendations with Google Ads.
