Transitioning to GA4

API’s Product Strategy team offers tips and resources to ensure your migration is successful and relatively painless and stress-free.

I’ve been working in digital journalism long enough to remember a time when Google Analytics didn’t exist. Nowadays, it’s such a facet of digital metrics analysis that it’s hard to imagine how we ever did without it. (While it’s true that Google is not the only website analytics platform, it is the most ubiquitous.)

Many newsrooms have relied on Google’s Universal Analytics since 2012, so imagine our collective surprise when Google announced in 2020 they were going to do away with GUA and replace it with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) on July 1, 2023. It seemed like such a faraway date, and now it feels like…quick, everybody panic!

With all of the challenges facing product teams right now (looking at you, Twitter and Meta), switching to and learning a new analytics platform isn’t on the top of anyone’s list. 

Since March, API’s Product Strategy team (with help from consultants Brad Gerick and Claire Tran) has hosted a series of training sessions to help newsrooms navigate the switch to GA4 ahead of the July 1 cutoff date. And trust me, this is one deadline you don’t want to blow off as you don’t want to risk losing access to any real-time analytics data.

We hope these resources and our FAQ will help you feel less overwhelmed, especially if you’re a small team (or a team of one). 

Best of luck, you got this. 

— Shay Totten, Newsroom Success Manager