How to Use Old Google Analytics

While Google Analytics 4 is now the standard, all the historical data you collected over the years in Universal Analytics (UA) is still sitting there, waiting to be used. This article will show you how to access your old Google Analytics account, pull essential historical reports, and export your data for future use before it's deleted permanently.

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Why Your Old Universal Analytics Data Is Still Important

You might be tempted to leave your old Universal Analytics data behind and focus solely on GA4. Before you do, consider what you'd be abandoning. That historical data is a digital archive of your business's online performance, containing valuable context that GA4, with its relatively short timeline, can't provide. Keeping and using this data is essential for several reasons.

1. Year-Over-Year (YoY) Benchmarking

One of the most common and critical business analytics tasks is comparing performance to the previous year. How did your Black Friday campaign this year stack up against last year's? Is your organic traffic growing season over season? Because GA4 only started collecting data when you installed it, any meaningful YoY comparison for the first year or two will require you to look back at your UA data. While the tracking models differ slightly, UA provides the only directional benchmark for understanding long-term growth trends.

2. Understanding Long-Term Content Performance

Which blog posts have been your all-stars over the last five years? Which landing pages consistently drove the most conversions every holiday season? Universal Analytics holds the complete performance history of every page on your site. This information is a goldmine for your content strategy, helping you identify evergreen topics, find pages worth updating and republishing, and understand what has historically resonated with your audience. Without it, you’re operating with only a short-term memory of what works.

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3. Analyzing Historical Channel Performance

GA4 gives you a clean slate, but it also hides the full story of your marketing channels. Your UA data can show you the long-term impact of your SEO efforts, the lifetime value generated from an old email marketing campaign, or the performance of referral traffic from a partner you no longer work with. This historical perspective helps you understand what investments have paid off over time and can inform future budget allocation and strategic decisions.

4. Preserving Conversion and Goal Data

You likely spent years fine-tuning Goals and Events in Universal Analytics, from tracking "Contact Us" form submissions to "PDF Download" clicks. While you've hopefully replicated these as conversion events in GA4, the historical data lives exclusively in UA. Having access to this data lets you see how conversion rates for key actions have changed over time and provides a complete record of goals that may have been retired but are still relevant for historical analysis.

How to Access Your Old Universal Analytics Account

Finding your way back to the familiar Universal Analytics interface is straightforward. Google hasn’t removed it yet, just hidden it behind the GA4 property. Follow these simple steps to access your UA property.

1. Log in to Google Analytics: Head to https://analytics.google.com/ and sign in with the Google account associated with your property. You will likely land on your GA4 dashboard by default.
2. Open the Account Selector: In the top-left corner of the screen, you'll see a dropdown menu that displays your current Account and Property name. Click on it.
3. Find Your UA Property: A menu will appear showing all the Analytics Accounts and Properties you have access to. GA4 properties typically just have a numeric ID (e.g., "123456789"). Your old Universal Analytics properties will have a "UA-" prefix followed by numbers (e.g., "UA-98765432-1").
4. Select the Correct Property and View: Click on the Universal Analytics property you want to access. If you have multiple Views (like "All Website Data" or "Test View"), select the one you need.

That's it! You should now see the classic Universal Analytics interface and have access to all your historical reports.

3 Key Historical Reports You Should Check Immediately

Once you're back in Universal Analytics, you can easily get lost in the sea of familiar reports. To make your analysis efficient, start with these three high-impact areas to extract immediate value from your historical data.

1. Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

What it is: This is arguably one of the most loved reports in Universal Analytics. It breaks down where your website visitors came from with unmatched clarity, showing you the exact source (like "google," "facebook.com," or a specific newsletter) and the medium ("organic," "cpc," "referral," or "email").

Why it's useful: This report is your comprehensive history of what marketing channels have actually worked. You can set the date range for the past five years and quickly see the long-term trend of your organic search traffic. Did a specific PR push two years ago result in a lasting stream of referral traffic? How did your early social media efforts perform? This report tells that story and provides hard data to back up your assumptions about channel effectiveness over time.

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2. Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

What it is: This report lists every single page on your website and ranks them by popularity metrics like Pageviews, Unique Pageviews, and Average Time on Page. It's a simple, powerful view of your most valuable content.

Why it's useful: Your most popular content over the last several years might not be what's currently trending. This report helps you rediscover "evergreen" content that consistently pulls in traffic. You can identify historical top-performers that might need a refresh or an update to regain their top rankings. Furthermore, by looking at pages with high traffic but high exit rates, you can spot historical pages that might have technical issues or outdated information that needs to be fixed or redirected.

3. Conversions > Goals > Reverse Goal Path

What it is: If you had a destination-based goal set up (like a "thank-you.html" page after a form submission), the Reverse Goal Path report shows you the last three pages visitors were on before they completed that goal.

Why it's useful: This report is an incredible tool for understanding which pieces of content historically contributed to conversions. You can see which blog posts, landing pages, or product pages funneled users toward making a purchase or filling out a contact form. While GA4 offers Path Exploration reports, this UA report is a uniquely simple and powerful way to view historical conversion funnels and identify which content pages were your unsung sales assistants.

How to Export Your Universal Analytics Data (Before It's Gone)

Google has announced that it will eventually delete all Universal Analytics data. To avoid losing years of valuable history, you need to export and save it. Here are a few methods, from simple to more advanced.

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Method 1: Manual Export from the UI

This is the most straightforward method for saving specific, high-value reports.

• Navigate to the report you want to save (e.g., Acquisition > Source/Medium).
• Set your desired date range. Be ambitious - go back as far as you can.
• In the top-right corner of the report, look for the "Export" button.
• Choose your preferred format: Google Sheets, Excel (XLSX), or CSV.

Pro-Tip: This method is quick but has a major limitation: it will only export the rows currently visible (up to 5,000). For reports with more than 5,000 rows, you will need to use a more robust method.

Method 2: The Google Sheets Add-on

For a more scalable and automated export, you can pull your UA data directly into Google Sheets using the official Google Analytics add-on.

1. Open a new Google Sheet.
2. Go to Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons.
3. Search for "Google Analytics" and install it.
4. Once installed, go to Extensions > Google Analytics > Create a new report.
5. A sidebar will appear. Name your report and select the correct Analytics Account, Property, and View for your UA data.
6. Choose the metrics (e.g., Sessions, Users, Goal Completions) and dimensions (e.g., ga:sourceMedium, ga:pagePath) you want to pull.
7. Go to the "Run Reports" tab and click run. The data will be pulled from the API and populated directly into your Google Sheet.

This method is fantastic because it bypasses the 5,000-row limit and lets you build custom reports by combining different metrics and dimensions in a way the UI doesn't allow.

Method 3: Connecting to Looker Studio

If you prefer a visual archive of your data, you can build dashboards in Google's Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio).

• Create a Looker Studio report and add a data source.
• Select "Google Analytics" as the connector.
• Follow the steps to authorize your account and choose your UA property and view.
• Build charts and tables to visualize your key historical data (YoY traffic, top pages by traffic, goals over time, etc.).

This method allows you to create an accessible, shareable dashboard that serves as a permanent visual summary of your UA performance. It's a great option for preserving high-level trends for team members and stakeholders.

Final Thoughts

Your business's past performance contains valuable lessons that can guide its future. By accessing, analyzing, and exporting your old Universal Analytics data, you retain critical context for benchmarking, content strategy, and long-term channel analysis. Don't wait until this treasure trove of information is gone forever - take the time to archive it now.

We know that juggling data from dozens of different marketing and sales platforms - including both GA4 and exported UA reports - can quickly become overwhelming. At https://www.graphed.com/register, we created a single platform where you can connect all your data sources in seconds. Instead of wrestling with spreadsheets, you can use natural language to ask questions about your performance and get a unified, real-time view of what's working across your entire business.