How to Switch from Google Analytics 4 to UA

Feeling nostalgic for the straightforward simplicity of Universal Analytics? You're not alone. Since the forced switch, many have found Google Analytics 4 confusing and are looking for a way to return to the familiar UA interface. This article will explain the current situation with Universal Analytics and show you how to get the clear, simple reporting you're missing.

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The Hard Truth: You Can’t Switch Back to Universal Analytics

Let's get the tough news out of the way first. It is no longer possible to switch back to Universal Analytics and collect new data. The platform was officially sunsetted by Google, and the process had two major cut-off dates:

• July 1, 2023: The official cutoff date. Universal Analytics properties stopped processing any new website traffic. Any hits sent to UA after this date were not recorded.
• July 1, 2024: The final farewell. All access to the Universal Analytics interface and any historical data stored within it will be permanently deleted.

While you might still be able to access your old UA data for a short time, you cannot send new data to it. The deprecation is final, making it essential to adapt to GA4 or find an alternative that better suits your needs. The goal is no longer to go back, but to move forward intelligently.

Why Is Everyone Missing Universal Analytics?

Understanding why you miss UA can help you recreate that experience. For most users, the frustration with GA4 comes down to a few key differences. UA was prized for its simplicity and out-of-the-box utility, which GA4 has exchanged for a more flexible but complex data model.

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Ready-Made, Intuitive Reports

In Universal Analytics, you could get 90% of what you needed from the default reports. The classic "ABC" structure was easy for anyone to grasp:

• Audience: Who are your users? (Demographics, Location)
• Acquisition: How did they get to your site? (Channels, Source/Medium)
• Behavior: What did they do on your site? (Landing Pages, Site Content)
• Conversions: Did they complete key actions? (Goals)

This structure is less obvious in GA4, which requires more customization and exploration to find the same basic information. Reports you used daily, like the Landing Pages report, are now hidden or need to be built from scratch.

Familiar and Simpler Metrics

Concepts like Bounce Rate were dead simple to understand: a user landed on a page and left without doing anything else. GA4 replaced this with an inverse metric, Engagement Rate, which measures "engaged sessions." An engaged session is one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews.

While arguably more nuanced, it doesn't have the same immediate, "at-a-glance" clarity that Bounce Rate provided for quickly identifying underperforming pages.

A Simpler Data Model

UA was built around 'sessions' and 'pageviews'. This model made it easy to visualize a user's journey through your website in a linear way. By contrast, GA4 is built around an 'events' and 'parameters' model. This means that everything - from a page view to an add-to-cart click to a form submission - is tracked as an event.

This event-based model is incredibly powerful for tracking complex user interactions across websites and apps, but it introduces a layer of abstraction that makes simple website reporting feel more complicated than it needs to be.

How to Make GA4 Feel More Like UA

You can't go back, but you can move forward by customizing GA4 to better reflect the reports and navigation you're used to. With a little setup, you can make the GA4 interface far less intimidating and much more functional for your day-to-day needs.

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1. Customize Your Reporting Navigation

One of the biggest frustrations is the default navigation menu. You can clean this up significantly by creating your own "Collections" and pinning "Library" reports to your menu.

Here’s how to add the classic “Landing Pages” report that many people miss:

1. On the left-hand navigation, click Reports.
2. At the bottom of the reports menu, click on the Library icon.
3. You'll see a collection of reports. Find the Landing page report.
4. Click the three dots on the report card and select Publish.
5. This will add the Landing Page report to your main navigation under the "Life Cycle" or whichever Collection you assign it to.

You can use this method to customize the entire left-side menu, moving the reports you use most often to convenient locations and hiding the ones you don't need. This simple trick alone can make navigating GA4 feel much closer to the UA experience.

2. Learn to Love "Explore" Reports

The "Explore" section is where GA4's real power lies, and it's the replacement for much of UA's custom reporting functionality. While it might look complex, you can quickly build almost any custom report you need.

For example, if you wanted to build a simple report showing Source/Medium and Revenue (a classic in e-commerce marketing):

1. In the left menu, go to Explore and select Blank report.
2. In the "Variables" column, click the "+" symbol next to Dimensions. Search for and import "Session source / medium."
3. Click the "+" next to Metrics. Search for and import "Total users" and "Total revenue."
4. Drag "Session source / medium" from the Variables panel over to the "Rows" box in the Tab Settings panel.
5. Drag "Total users" and "Total revenue" over to the "Values" box.

Your beautiful, familiar traffic and revenue report will instantly appear. You can save this exploration and come back to it anytime without having to rebuild it.

3. Use Comparisons to Recreate Segments

Did you frequently use Segments in Universal Analytics to compare traffic from different channels (e.g., Organic vs. Paid)? GA4's equivalent is called "Comparisons."

At the top of most standard reports, you'll see an "Add comparison" button. Click this to build a filter that lets you see different user groups side-by-side. For instance, you could build one comparison for "Session source / medium contains google / organic" and another for "Session source / medium contains google / cpc" to compare SEO traffic against Google Ads traffic.

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Consider UA-Like Alternatives

If tweaking GA4 feels like a chore and you're yearning for genuine simplicity, you might be better served by one of the many Google Analytics alternatives. Many of these tools were created specifically to be simpler and more privacy-focused.

• Plausible Analytics: An open-source, lightweight alternative. It gives you all the essential metrics (pageviews, top sources, bounce rate) on a single page. It's built for speed and simplicity.
• Fathom Analytics: Another privacy-first tool with a beautiful single-page dashboard. Fathom is incredibly user-friendly and presents data in a clean, easily digestible format without the complexity of GA4.
• Matomo: A powerful, open-source platform that's a more direct competitor to Google Analytics. It offers a lot of the same features as UA and can be self-hosted for complete data ownership.

These tools often require a subscription, but the cost can easily be justified by the time you save if you find GA4's interface too cumbersome for your workflow.

Final Thoughts

While the ship has sailed on returning to Universal Analytics, you aren't stuck with a tool you can't use. Your two best paths forward are to either customize the GA4 interface to recreate your favorite UA reports or to switch to a simpler alternative analytics tool better suited to your needs.

A third option is to simply change how you interact with your data. Instead of spending hours learning a new platform, we built Graphed to do the work for you. Connect your GA4 account in seconds, and then just ask for a report using plain English, like "Show me my top landing pages by organic sessions this month" or "create a graph comparing revenue from Facebook Ads and Google Ads." We instantly build the visualization for you, saving you from ever having to fight with the GA4 interface again.