Upgrade to Google Universal Analytics

Question

I searched everything to find out everything you need to consider when upgrading to Universal Analytics.

I found this post:

Google Analytics - Switching to Asynchronous Code

He explains that if you do nothing, you must be in order. We have many on-site tracking events that we would like to keep the same. We also have some custom variables that I could handle and / or deal with custom sizes.

In addition, we have a fairly simple setup.

We have a "keep alive" event that helps determine the exact time on the site.

Another really important question has everything related to the possibility of moving from classical analytics to Universal. Is it possible? I found an article that said it wasn’t, but this article was a couple of months ago and was not sure that it was still true.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Universal Analytics is Google’s newest tracking code. It is currently in beta testing, so you may need to postpone it, depending on your resources ... In principle, it works more or less the same as asynchronous. Here are the highlights:

• The syntax is different. All configuration / tracking is done by calling ga()
• Some of the "config" arguments for things have been ported to the GA interface. For example, names and scope for custom variables are no longer passed as arguments on the page. Now they run in the GA interface. In fact, to be more precise, user variables no longer exist. Google now has custom dimensions and metrics. Custom sizes are the closest translation to user variables (they are basically the same). Custom metrics are a kind of combination between dimensions and events.
• Currently, Google does NOT offer a way to upgrade your profiles / accounts (s) to the Universal Analytics style. To use Universal Analytics, you need to create a new account or profile. If you want to try Universal Analytics, Google currently recommends implementing it along with the traditional or asynchronous version that you have already implemented.
• Currently, Google does not officially declare when or if they will provide funds for the transfer of existing profiles, although I personally think that they will ultimately be because the preservation of historical data and the reduction in time and costs associated with migration are of serious concern to all.

Answer 2

In addition to @ Crayon-Violent's answer, keep in mind that the current Core Reporting API (v3) does not support receiving custom measurement / metric data.

Answer 3

Google announced this month that classic analytics features can be upgraded to Universal without data loss.

Universal Analytics is a suite of technological innovations that improve the way Google Analytics collects and processes data. Universal Analytics Upgrade is a process that you can use to upgrade all your classic Google Analytics properties to Universal Analytics properties without losing data or changing account settings. Soon, all Google Analytics properties will be used to use Universal Analytics. Any properties that do not follow the upgrade process will be automatically transferred to Universal Analytics in the future.

You can update your analytics property from the analytics admin panel. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/

If you have problems updating, you can contact the Google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ua-upgrade

Answer 4

I recently inherited a project downloaded using Google Analytics, and I have never worked with them before. Moving the code in Universal Analytics was simple, with the exception of moving from Custom Vars to Dimensions. There is little to be highlighted in the Google documentation.

After some digging, I discovered a couple of things that I think can help others who are migrating:

1) Set or change your own parameters and indicators

Please note that when setting the sizes, you are provided with code fragments that you can copy and paste into your project.

2) How to use the code to send custom measurements and metrics

This documentation will help you understand the code snippets provided and find out how best to work with them.

I hope that this information will relieve others of the pain that I experienced going through this.

Answer 5

I created a plugin as jQuery Migrate for backward compatibility eventTracking and other functions. Allow developers to port the old _gaq.push () methods to the ga () object.

https://github.com/empiricompany/universal-analytics-migrate