I received an email from Google Analytics, but I don't know if the changes will affect our use of Google Analytics? Can you investigate if the below changes affect our use of Google Analytics?
Below is the content of the email：
From: Google Analytics
Subject: Important changes to your Google Analytics for mobile apps properties
Disclaimer: If you are an Analytics 360 account holder, your properties in the 360 account will not be impacted by the changes described here and you can disregard this message.
Dear Google Analytics customer,
You are receiving this email because you have been identified as a user of the older style of Google Analytics mobile apps reporting and the Google Analytics Services SDK. Specifically, we are notifying you regarding your Google Analytics account(s) xxx xxx (1234567) and their properties listed below.
We want to remind you that starting this October we will begin sunsetting this older style of Google Analytics for mobile apps reporting and the Google Analytics Services SDK. We are investing our resources in the latest style of app reporting in Google Analytics that works in conjunction with Firebase – Google’s integrated app developer platform. As such, the following will take place:
Starting October, we will begin to decommission properties that were identified at the time of our first notice as receiving data exclusively from the Google Analytics Services SDK.
Data collection and processing for such properties will stop October 31, 2019.
Reporting access through our UI and API access will remain available for these properties’ historical data until January 31, 2020.
After our service is fully turned down in February, 2020, these properties will no longer be accessible via our Google Analytics UI or API, and their data will be removed from Google Analytics servers. You will receive further notification as these deadlines approach.
We want to give you plenty of time to make the transition and start collecting new data using the Firebase SDK, since your historical data will no longer be available. Our latest solution, however, is even more intuitive and includes free and unlimited event reporting to meet the needs of app-centric businesses. We’ve invested heavily to make this solution best-in-class, with new features and capabilities, such as a more robust Audience builder and multi-dimensional report filtering, rolling-out continually. Additionally, our offering is closely integrated with other Google products and features to help grow your app business like Crashlytics, Google Ads, AdMob and Remote Config. For more information, visit the Help Center for an overview and list of available features.
Affected Properties: xxx App Production (UA-1234567-6).
Thank you,
The Google Analytics Team
Related
For some reason PowerBI does not accept GA4 as a connection, so my data is stuck in GA4.
PowerBI does support Universal Analytics (UA), but I cannot find a way to convert my GA property.
Is there a way to do this or should I start over again and create a new property as UA?
PowerBI currently doesn't support GA4 as a destination because the underlying api is not product ready yet. See the response in the microsoft power BI community here: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Power-BI-Google-Analytics/td-p/1679530
For information about the api's and their current state:
This is a link to the api documentation the plugin is using (for universal analytics): https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v4
This is a link to the api documentation of GA4 (which is still in beta): https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/data/v1
Regarding a solution for your issue:
In GA4 is it possible to export data to big query, which can be processed there and imported to PowerBI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-connect-bigquery
The export only works from the moment you enable it, so it is not possible to access the data this way before the enablement.
Second option is using data studio to connect to your GA4 data to be able to access the data you have measured before.
First off as everyone says you cant change the type of your Google analytics account if it was created as UA then its UA if it was created as GA4 then its GA4. There is also no way to exxport data.
Now lets look at the underlying cause of your problem Google analytics connector in Power BI Desktop rely on the Google Analytics Core Reporting API this API is used to extract data from Google Analytics UA accounts. There is a very big difference between the underlying data structure of a UA account and a GA4 account they are not completable in any way shape or form.
Thats why the Google analytics team is currently developing the Google analytics data api This api has the ability to connect to Google analytics GA4 accounts and extract data. At the time this post was created Power BI Google Analytics The Google analytics data api had just been released and was still in alpha test phase as you can see from the change log this API is still under development. I haven't checked but it looks like it may even be out of beta now. (TBH I am not really sure of the exact date it was released publicly as I have been in the alpha test group for a long time.)
However that being said a lot of the client libraries used by this api are still under development as well Google .Net Client library for Google Analytics Data API for example is still in beta. At the time that post was written i am almost 100% sure the client library had not been released.
This means that any power bi connector is probably not going to be released until both the API and the client library are considered stable. I know the team is working hard on the API and I Haven't seen any breaking changes in a very long time.
So to the user who added a bounty to this looking for an updated answer.
IMO I don't think you have long to wait before everything is stable enough for applications like the Power BI to start appearing that support GA4. That is assuming that someone creates one.
You can't covert GA4 to UA (or UA to GA4).
In your case you can create a new UA Property and start to track in it:
What is a reliable way to send server-originated events (like purchase and refund) about specific mobile app users to Google Analytics 4 today?
As far as I can see, GA 4 Measurement protocol is still in the alpha stage. I've tried to implement it, however, it does not work (events sent to it are available in Realtime Dashboard and in intraday BigQuery table but they are not present in the daily dump of BigQuery and in the Google Analytics dashboards. Recently even this stopped working and I can't see any events nor in BigQuery neither in Realtime Dashboard.)
Also, there is a feature called Google Tag Manager Server Container.
I've found there a way to send events to GA4. However, it seems that GA4 Tag supports only events which were collected from web pages (it has Measurement ID parameter only, which corresponds to a specific data source in Google Analytics), but does not support mobile apps.
I have create a Google analytics 4 property and been running and gathering data for while now.
I need some external tools to integrate with it and I saw developers reporting that GA4 does not have an API yet, so it does not support any integrations.
I saw that you can create a dual UA and GA4 property but I was unable to find how to add UA to existing GA4 property.
In short: How do I add universal analytics view without loosing any data or integrate with external tools i.e. slack bot posting regular updates? (work around with big Query?)
GA4 does have an API. You can use the Google Analytics Data API v1 to fetch analytics data. The developer's site for this API has more information: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/data/v1. The API is currently available at an Alpha (preview) stability. The API will be entering Beta shortly.
When you read about creating dual Property it means tracking with both GA4 and Universal Analytics separately. They are 2 different scripts that track data in different platforms with different model.
Therefore you can create a new Universal Analytics Property in your Google Analytics Account and insert that code in the pages of your site, however it will start tracking from that moment on, you cannot have the history, both because you cannot transport data from a Property to the another (even if they were 2 Properties of the same type), and because GA4 has a completely different data collection model.
In any case, from the moment you start tracking with Universal Analytics then you can query the data with the relative API (i.e. Analytics Reporting API).
We have a web application that uses analytics.js of google analytics, and we received an email from google analytics team stating that:
This is a reminder that your Google Analytics account(s) XYZ and their
properties listed below use the older style of Google Analytics mobile
apps reporting and the legacy Google Analytics Services SDK, which
will be sunset starting this October when we will stop collecting data
for your property
....
What will happen to my Google Analytics properties listed above?
• Starting in October, we will begin to decommission properties that
were identified at the time of our first notice as receiving data
exclusively from the Google Analytics Services SDK.
• Data collection and processing for such properties will stop October
31, 2019.
• Reporting access through our UI and API access will remain available
for these properties’ historical data until January 31, 2020.
• After our service is fully turned down in February 2020, these
legacy properties will no longer be accessible via our Google
Analytics UI or API, and their data will be removed from Google
Analytics servers. You will receive additional notification as these
deadlines approach.
My questions are:
would analytics.js be affected by Google Analytics mobile apps
reporting and the legacy Google Analytics Services SDK sunset?
If I create a new Apps property or (Apps and web) property today, will it be decommission on October?
Thanks in advance
No, analytics.js won't be affected. Analytics.js is the library you're using to send data to GA.
If you create a new apps property, the wizard would walk you through and create a Firebase property, which is what it is suggested migration path in the sunset. There is also the new "Web and App" property type that would allow you to track app and web users in the same property.
I'm still trying to get my free game app discovered, and notice that most of my new downloads are coming from '(not set)' according to Google Analytics/Aquisition/App Marketplace. And this despite a 'This report has been filtered to include only data where there are values for "App Installer ID" dimension' message on the page. According to the docs:
"A marketplace must support the App Installer ID to be recognized by Google Analytics. Not all marketplaces support the App Installer ID, which is what Google Analytics needs to recognize a marketplace. Traffic that comes from a marketplace that Google Analytics can’t identify appears in the report as (not set)."
I've only submitted my app to Google Play. Should I be concerned about these apparent rogue downloads? What marketplace are they coming from?
Several sites offer direct APK file downloads, one of the biggest being 'Apkmonk' where I found my free game app posted. As reported from the updated Google Analytics 'Acquisition/App Marketplace' graph, I now get 50-350 new user downloads a day from unidentified markets, compared to about 1-5 a day from Google Play (com.android.vending). I had to adjust the support code provided in the docs and examples (i.e. Trivial Drive) for InApp purchases and Google Play Services (particularly the IabHelper file) to support players who had neither Google Play Services nor Google Play Store installed on their devices. They all appeared to get null pointer exceptions on starting the app before I adjusted the code. I experimented uninstalling Google Play Services and turning off Google Play Store on my test device to find null pointer and other crash points in the support code.
As far as app performance in non-Google acquistion markets, I get banner and interstitial ad serves, but that's it. No leaderboard or achievement posts, promo redemptions or InApp purchases, which makes sense. I only get .00-.02 cents per banner or interstitial ad click in these markets, with demographics mostly US and India.