Cinthia Pacheco (00:02.446) Hey Erica, how's it going? Good. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. So we were talking a few months ago and we're like, Hey, I think you told me, Hey, this thing is happening. The universal Google analytics whole tool is going away and we need to do, we need to talk to our clients about this. And so Erica was like, have you talked to your clients about this? And I'm like, no.
And then I'm like, have you talked to your clients about this? No. And I guess it is kind of like, it is like a little bit of like a pivotal moment because I was reading that Universal has been around like seven years or maybe almost 10 years. And that's a long time, like digitally. And we all just got really used to this tool and now it's just going to, it's going to be gone. Like,
and not just the tool, but most importantly, the data that's in the tool. So yeah, what are your initial feelings? I'm just like playing a little bit therapist here, but like, what are your initial feelings with this like tool being no longer existing? Oh, I'm definitely sad. I was a, I feel like I kind of grew up with universal analytics. Like that was really like my jam and what I felt very comfortable with. And so.
I felt like I was an expert in, although it's always kind of feels weird to call yourself an expert, but I did feel like an expert in universal analytics. And now saying that I at all feel comfortable in calling myself an expert in Google analytics these days with GA4 is even more cringe worthy to me to say, because it's very different.
They completely changed the way how it collects data, how it records it. So comparing it isn't apples to apples. So it does make sense that they are retiring Universal Analytics. But yeah, as you know, we got the shut off on July 1st of last year, where we were sort of forced into that transition to GA4. Universal Analytics stopped collecting data, but they gave us a one -year grace period to be able to look back. And yeah.
Cinthia Pacheco (02:21.518) That's when I reached out to you and I was like, so how do we handle this? Look back because anybody cares beyond the past 12 months. Um, you know, it's, it's going to be challenging to try and figure out how do we, uh, again, reference that if we need to. Right. Yeah. I think, I think it does make sense for them to sunset it because like you said, it's not apples to apples and there's like an evolution of even what.
what like the key metrics they were using to track success and things like that and engagement. And so it changed our concept of tracking. So it's almost like they changed the, I don't know what a good analogy would be, but it's kind of like, yeah, they upgraded the language. And so you don't want people lenient on the old thing because I still hear people complaining about how they don't like it. And I get it. It's different, but hey, they did it for a reason. It's not like they're like trying to torture us. Like I do think the new tracking is,
in theory, more helpful. But it's like they have to just wean us off. Okay, July, I have it here. So it's officially, just so everybody knows, July 1st, 2024, you won't be able to access any Universal Analytics properties or the API, even if it's read -only access, and all the data will be deleted. Dun, dun, dun. While the standard sunset took weeks to complete, the full and Universal Analytics shutdown will happen within a week. So,
So, and I guess the other thing, I mean, we can talk a little bit about this too, but the GA4 only in the tool only, I think you just mentioned this, it only retains a year of traffic, correct? Yeah, the data retention settings, if you just set up a GA4 property. It's months, 14 months, right? I just said Yeah, 14 months is the maximum, but by default it's two months. So if you just started,
A GA4 property, you may want to extend that data retention setting so you can look back further. I believe it still will capture like traffic stats, but events, conversions, the things that most people, you know, care most about their website. That is only up to 14 months. So sort of the new normal with GA4 is being able to back up data. If you want to look back, it's
Cinthia Pacheco (04:47.246) We, I think somewhat took for granted the universal. We didn't have this problem. It was just there when you needed it. And was there after you recorded the data. So, so this is definitely a change. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense again, the scalability and even you think about the cost of warehousing all this data and then people aren't using it or like it's.
It's fascinating, right? But we're not going to talk about that. But yeah, so this episode, what we do want to talk about are like, what solutions do you have available to you now to save your universal data, whatever you have, and to also start thinking going forward, how are you going to have a process to save your data ongoing? And so when I say like process and tools, we're going to be talking about like, you know,
screenshots and spreadsheets on one hand, and then we'll be talking about like, yeah, like databases and SQL and, you know, more fancy dashboards. Now, we're probably going to maybe do another episode in a few months, like maybe running through something more specifically, but this is like high level overview of what you have available and just like some, hopefully some comfort that you're not alone. Like we're all doing this. So.
You still have time right now, we're recording in February, but do take a proactive approach so that hopefully like June 30th, does June have 30 days? 31 days, I don't know. Just like, yeah, not having to be scrambling. It's 30 days, yeah. Last minute because, and so just also quickly, why do you wanna back up your data? Just to be able to reference, again, it's not apples to apples, but.
having a little bit of a reference to track your results to know and to learn, right? And comparing periods of time is one of the most interesting ways to like learn from our website data. Yeah. Great summer, yes. Do you know what the settings are? I was trying to read a little bit for paid Google Analytics people, Google Analytics 360.
Cinthia Pacheco (07:10.67) They still have a cutoff as well. Yes, they also have a cutoff, but they make it easier for 360 users to be able to back up your data into BigQuery. Standard Universal Analytics users like myself and pretty much everyone I've spoken to is that that is not paying for Google Analytics if you haven't paid for it.
there are sort of third party tools that allow you to back it up, but it's not a standard process. You would share a screenshot of like their help article from Google and ways to export your data. And essentially, it's like exporting individual reports, like you said, screenshots, exporting specific data that you might want to have. And that is...
kind of time consuming because I think the thing that's overwhelming around this subject for me is like not knowing what those future questions are. You can only predict with like what you measure today, but if you wanted to see how did this page do two years ago compared to today, that's so granular. And so trying to predict all of those different variables and needs.
can be challenging. And so there are third party tools that allow you to kind of be a little bit more robust with how much data you can export into like a data warehouse. But even that is not fully comprehensive. There's no like one click and here all of a sudden you still have access to universal analytics. We're all going to have to sort of pick and choose what's important to us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like you said, within the
Google Analytics Wiki, they say CSV, TSV, TSV for Excel, Excel, Google Sheets, and then PDF. And they do say there's like a Google Sheets add -on to like, I guess it like maybe automates the process a little bit. But so, okay, so I guess before we get into like some of the more...
Cinthia Pacheco (09:29.422) whatever, not advanced, but the more complex tools, if we're not talking about a screenshot, like what do you, on a first glance, what do you think would be some like baseline reports that someone would want to get apart? Like we'll get into the specific stuff and some questions, but like, what are some baseline reports that you would just like right off the bat be like, yeah, let's just grab those. Yeah, I would do sort of traffic month over month. So sessions, users, conversions.
revenue, if that applies to you, or leads. Those would be sort of like top line, like what was the actual metric for each month. Yes. Then from there, we get into traffic acquisition. So maybe you want to see patterns, particularly in organic search over month over month. So those same metrics, but that you're sort of just filtering down organic paid, all of your important channels. Right.
Then from there, the product reports could be helpful, but if you are on an e -commerce or you are lead gen, hopefully you're CRM for lead gen, or you have an e -commerce platform that collects some of that data, so you'll be able to understand what were your top performers like last year.
And you don't have to rely on Google Analytics for that. So that's kind of how I've been thinking about it, is it's more about the traffic patterns and sort of cataloging that. But also, yeah, starting to get a little bit more comfortable in having different data sources as well to be able to answer some of those questions. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I would also do, I mean, if I...
I guess this is more specific, but let's say I was, you know, I have a more extensive SEO campaign or some sort of, I mean, email campaign. Yeah. I would probably just go to the email provider, but just looking at like landing pages to conversions. Um, like I know that in, uh, again, universal, you could do like landing page and then add a dimension for your different events. And.
Cinthia Pacheco (11:47.982) it might be helpful to break it down by the different traffic source. So you kind of have like a comparative there of like, okay, last year we, I don't know, from SEO, again, we got these many opt -ins and then, you know, if you have sales and obviously revenue, you could do that as well. But there, I also think like more specifically, I would focus on your landing page.
Like what are your landing pages? And then like filtering the data a little bit so that those aren't going to change. And like, unless you create new ones, but there's some things that you know, you're going to continue to sell. Like if you have a sales page for your course or a sales page for a specific offer that has an SEO strategy around it, filtering so that you're just looking at that data. Um, and that you could probably do. I mean, I would do it maybe year over year.
I don't know how many years of data someone could potentially have, you know, a few years of data in there. Um, but you could maybe even batch a few years. It depends how much data you have as well. Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. I think that that's the thing that's also challenging and trying to offer this as a service to clients is that everybody's different. Um, everybody's data, you know, some of them may have started right when universal analytics came out. Uh, some of them may have started only.
a year before it was discontinued. So everyone's kind of in a different situation. And like I said, there's no like sort of one, you know, this is the one click button to export it and be able to access it in the future. So each scenario is can be very different on on how we approach this. But yeah, I would think that it was interesting when you were talking, I was thinking about how not provided.
gate happened, do you remember that? So Google, for those who aren't aware, like 10 years ago or so, Google used to be able to tell you in Google Analytics which organic keywords drove revenue. Well, due to privacy concerns, Google Analytics decided that they weren't going to provide this anymore, and so all keywords show as not provided.
Cinthia Pacheco (14:09.07) We finally got that information back a little bit in Google Search Console where we can see how we rank for keywords and we can try and piece together based on what pages and how, what keywords those pages rank for and then which pages convert in Google Analytics, kind of tying those two data sources together. And it feels very similar in this scenario where you're kind of piecing two different data sources together to try and piece together that puzzle.
Again, it's a little bit more complex to try and answer such specific questions probably from the past. And something that we've all been familiar with with Google Search Console is that it always was a 16th month rolling data period. So you can't go back two years. So some of us SEOs have been kind of in this world of having limited data anyway. So we're kind of.
So interestingly, when all of these things started to come up with Google Analytics, part of me was like, I guess I sort of, you know, I can roll with it because that's what we've been doing in SEO for a while now. And actually, I think it was even more limited and they kept on expanding it. So we started in Google Search Console back when it was called Google Webmasters. I think it was only six months.
And then they finally extended it to 16. And that felt like such a like, wow, thank you. Such a present, you know? So even that, yeah, I think 14 months with Google Analytics with data retention settings. Did we go into that yet? Was the data retention settings? Yeah, 14 months. Yeah, you need to set that up. And you also will talk about BigQuery in a second. I also wanted to say, like, just to like,
close off the idea of like, what do you need to download? Because this step needs to come first, like just kind of doing a bit of a business review of like your data. So questions I would ask and what I'm gonna ask my clients are like, what are your top marketing channels that you're really invested in? What again, like your top services, that sort of thing. And are there any specific campaigns that were like really successful or unsuccessful? Because that's also interesting like,
Cinthia Pacheco (16:33.806) I doing a baseline of like year over year of traffic. That makes sense to me. Cause it's like, okay, I can just grab this month, this year. I mean, I wouldn't do months, but maybe year, I think yeah. And Google analytics, universal, you can break it out by month anyway. So that makes sense. But then like, okay, in 2022 or 2021, you had this incredible campaign in July. Let's like get a little bit more specific there because we might want to use that information going forward. So.
having kind of like a list and then setting priorities. And yeah, again, doing this over time might be helpful, because then you'll have it at the back of your head. Like I see my clients coming back to me and being like, oh, there's still time, it's August. Can you go back and like, can we just get a little bit of this, more of this? Because getting used to also, like you said, like piecing things together might also stimulate new questions and yeah, new ideas.
But do that before July 1st, because we won't be able to help if there's any questions you need in Universal prior to then. So probably best to start getting those ideas and starting to think about this process. I think also just to say that it makes Cynthia and my life so much easier if you already know what you want. I think what's feeling so overwhelming of this is,
that we don't know what it is you need yet. And so trying to predict this for all everyone feels very overwhelming. So if you come in and say, this is what I care about. Oh, that, that like this will wait off my shoulders. I can solve her problems, but predicting how to solve potential problems, whole other story. Yeah. I think, again, I think if, if we can just get a baseline of like, just
like you said, traffic users, that sort of thing. And then, and then just like looking at a high level at some marketing, like that's more important. All right. So let's dive into some of like, if you don't want to be downloading spreadsheets, or maybe you want to download spreadsheets and a few other things. So one of like the more integrated solutions is a tool called BigQuery, which is part of like Google's suite of tools. And so basically it's a data warehouse.
Cinthia Pacheco (18:55.918) what allows you to save your data because there's two components to what's going on here. One is saving our data. So we're talking about like all the data that goes into Google Analytics, saving it somewhere into a database. And then the second part of this is visualizing that data, right? Because if we're just able to save it and not maybe look at it, I mean, not super helpful, right? So Google Analytics,
GA4 automatically has like a BigQuery extension, which before we hit record, I was telling Erica that I saw it somewhere and I can't find it anymore. But anyway, we can always do like another, again, another follow up call on that. But there's definitely like, Google has provided this option. I think you get like a free BigQuery account and there's a limit on how much data you can put in there.
but you can like automatically put your Google Analytics 4 data on there. That being said, so why I'm mentioning that is that again, this 14 month retention period, we need to be thinking about, are we housing our data somewhere if we want to be able to compare it going forward, apart from this death of universal. So in terms of yeah, migrating that data to...
So BigQuery would just house the data. Now I'm not really seeing them tell you about how to get it to BigQuery. Like I'm seeing that 360 customers can directly export to BigQuery, but it still sounds like there's a little bit of work you need to do if you were to do BigQuery to get Universal to connect with BigQuery. Have you seen anything around that?
Yeah, so I tested with a third party tool called Analytics Canvas that allowed me to basically download all my universal analytics data. And I had to set it up in BigQuery.
Cinthia Pacheco (21:00.238) And it felt like a whole layer of Google that I have not seen before, which is more like the admin side. Everything that I see is so much more like I'm seeing the user interface. This felt like I was much more behind the scenes on the backend. And so I set up a workspace and I had to tie that to the export utility tool that I was using. And...
If you're not familiar with this, like I have never done that before. It was a little intimidating. But, and so I think that's why the 360 users, it's probably a little bit more turnkey for users. More streamlined. They're probably like pressing a few things and they've got like their account manager. I'm sure Google is taking ownership of this, this process as well, because they have.
they work more closely with the Google team when you pay, right? Right. Yeah, that's my assumption. So everyone else, me included, that uses the free version, it's a little bit more of a manual process. And thankfully, there's great documentation out there on how to use BigQuery and how to export and tie it to your data. Again, Analytics Canvas was one that someone recommended to me, and they have
great documentation, I was able to follow it. Even though I didn't know what I was doing at the time, I was able to follow it and it worked. But then as you mentioned, there's one step of actually connecting it and warehousing it, but then pulling that data. And that's the part where I'm still trying to figure out how to pull that into existing reports and make it usable.
So you could pull it into BigQuery and then put it into Data Studio or sorry, Looker Studio. Yes, exactly. Yeah, which by the way, that's another Google inside the suite. That's like another tool which allows you to visualize data, any data, you can pull it from anywhere. So someone could also potentially download that to a spreadsheet. Again, I don't know the complexities because I haven't done it, but.
Cinthia Pacheco (23:20.622) You can pull spreadsheet data into a data studio, data eye looker studio as well. But it's probably less, it'll be less detailed. I'm assuming the big query, just the level of detail and all the different dimensions, like all the data. Okay. So that's, that's one interesting option. The other ones I've found like two other options. So sounds similar.
to analytics canvas, but I saw one by a company called Supermetrics. And so they also allow you to use Google BigQuery to then use Supermetrics to like visualize the data. So you still need to have the, yeah, the storing of the data somewhere, which...
they're suggesting BigQuery, but it sounds like they have like a BigQuery connector. So it's like something that's a little bit more pre -baked maybe than Looker Studio where you're building your, you know, Looker Studio, you start with a blank slate, right? Again, I haven't personally done the supermetrics, but it looks like they have something a little bit more to get like created, I guess. And that one.
So these are paid options as well. I haven't looked at the specific pricing for that one. The other one which I looked at was analytics safe, which I think does both actually. It saves your data and it also visualizes it. And I don't know again how much data storing they do.
but they do say secure data storage. I guess you have to kind of read the fine print. But these two, like the reason why I'm highlighting these two is that they have, like on the analytics safe homepage, they have like a whole thing that says save your universal analytics data before Google clears it. So they're obviously building a tool that's like solving this problem and they're doing everything.
Cinthia Pacheco (25:41.614) Uh, so that's another option. And I'm seeing that they have a payment of, for that $30 a month, which I guess, you know, is, is okay. Um, the thing is that now you're reliant. So you're paying for that forever because once you, once you migrate your data there, it's like, it's there. Right. And unless you switch solutions and you have a backup somewhere else, but. Yeah. So that was the.
The thing that I liked about Analytics Canvas was that it's a one -time export for $99. And then you have it to connect to Looker Studio. Versus I think some of these, yeah, you have to pay for the monthly fee. And it kind of stressed me out. That was one of the questions I asked first was, do I have to keep having this subscription? Or are you going to delete it if I pause my account? Because that scares me.
And I'm not sure about all of the different options and what their model looks like. I know particularly for that one that, nope, you own it once you've been able to back it up. So yeah, that kind of scared me, the idea of having reoccurring costs. Maybe you could do a combo, like do a backup with something like analytics canvas, and then decide if you want to invest in
Because the annoying thing is that you want to be able to look at your data, right? So it's not helpful if you just have it saved and you're like, okay, but this is gibberish, right? So there could be like a two tiered, yeah, two tiered sort of thing where you're able to like back it up and then decide if you want to do something else. It's weird, the supermetrics have like a pricing.
option, but then they don't tell you the pricing. They request a demo. Like people, if you have a pricing page, just put the price. Don't make me demo you unless Steve, I do start free trial. If it tells me that, um, anyway, I'm always, yeah. So that's, that's all going to be our part two. Our part two is us actually getting into the weeds of all of these solutions and try and really having some concrete recommendations. I think the, the purpose of this.
Cinthia Pacheco (28:04.238) podcast was a little bit more just like, Hey, this is what's on my mind right now. Just to like make your 2024 more interesting. Yeah. In case, in case, uh, I seem stressed out lately. Now you know why. Oh, that's nice that you care so much about their data. I don't stress out over this stuff, by the way. It's like, it's just data. I mean, obviously it's very important, but, um, I'm sure.
gotten various reactions. I've had some people I've talked to and they're like, yeah, that's fine. We'll just live in the new normal. It's fine. And then I've had other people really like, oh my gosh, really? They're going to get rid of it? We've got a plan now. And I want to say that they were doing that before even I got, I said, as of January 1st, new year.
I'm going to worry about this. So I have been worried about it for almost two months now. But I had some people who were, you know, getting stressed out about this before the new year. And I said, oh, it's fine. We've got six months to prepare for this. Yeah. Yeah. No one's, no one's going to, nothing bad's going to happen. I mean, the worst is like, yeah, you don't download it and like, you'll just have to think a little bit more, but.
It is best practice, so everybody listening, yes, make an effort to have at least a backup of something because it's like as a business owner, your web analytics and your marketing analytics and your data are like incredible assets for information and knowledge and wisdom and all the things we use Google Analytics for. So we recommend it, but I also don't recommend losing sleep over it.
Yeah. I wish you gave me that advice. I was also going to just mention with Looker Studio, since you had mentioned that as an option. So right now, because Universal Analytics is still accessible, you can tie in that as a data source and use that in your data visualization. If you hover over three dots on the chart,
Cinthia Pacheco (30:28.654) it allows you to export. So you could export that into a Google Sheet, and then you can re -import that into your Looker Studio report. So that could be an easier way to sort of address if you have standard reports, that's assuming you're using Looker Studio already. That one feels like the most easy option. So export it, not the visual data, like the data data.
The data data. Yep. And then it's in Google Sheets and you're just reconnecting it. Right. So you've got the, you've got the Looker Studio and your Sheets is your database. And so that's, yeah, that's smart. You're smart. Yeah, no, no, that makes sense. You still need to know how to do that. Right. But it should be fairly straightforward to kind of again, your - And that allows you to play a little bit because Looker Studio, you can,
like change date ranges so you could potentially do like a year. I mean, you could do all your, now I'm thinking about it. Could you pull like multiple years and then download that data and re, okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I do have some templates for that. So maybe, um,
following this, I could send you a link on how to do some month over month. You're so generous with your templates. Yes, that would be amazing. Thank you. No, I think that is an interesting option. Again, we're talking about baseline, right? Because I think anything that gets a little more complex. But I think hybrid, like doing backups with BigQuery and then finding maybe two solutions, like, OK, this is the data database, like official thing that I'm saving.
And then this is the solution I have for reporting. So I can like click around and like do a little digging. Yeah, so. Oh, look at Erica dropping that last little tidbit at the very end. You got to look into the very end, my friends. Yeah. So again, I think we'll probably do a part two once we've started to explore a little bit more of these different options. But this is a great conversation starter.
Cinthia Pacheco (32:44.664) that I'm going to point all my clients to this podcast, because I want them to take away from this of what data do I need for how long? All of those questions, if you can come to me with what you did, it makes my life so much easier. Yes. Yeah, maybe for the part two, we can do more of like a demo, because then it's like a little bit more specific. So, yeah. Yeah, how to. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Erica. Always so helpful. Yeah. Thank you.