Transition to Google Analytics 4

For over a decade, the University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias websites have utilized Google Analytics to measure web traffic in many ways— in aggregate, it provides several types of information:

  • Who is coming to our website? Geographic information, device information, primary language of the visitor, etc.
  • How did they get here? Source information such as traffic from search engines, social media, and inbound links.
  • What did they do once here? Reports on our most popular pages, entry points into the site, time spent reading pages, etc.

In June of next year, Google will stop gathering data on the older “Universal Analytics” service that we have used. Report data will still be available historically, but new information will no longer be gathered.

Over the coming months, Digital Communications will be adding “Google Analytics 4” to your websites; during this transition, reports will be available in both the old and new software, to provide continuity in reporting.

What do you need to do to get ready?

If you have configured your website to use a Google Analytics account that we do not manage, we will reach out individually to help with this transition. You can help us with this work by adding mike.kirby@maine.edu as an administrator for your Google Analytics account. This will also ensure that access to your analytics can be maintained even if the person who originally set up the account is no longer available.