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Why Export Universal Analytics (GA3) Data to Google Sheets Now? + [Guide]

If you are still migrating from Universal Analytics to GA4, it’s important to know that data collection has ceased, and all existing data will be deleted by June 30, 2024. This means that your valuable analytics history will not automatically transfer to the new Google Analytics 4 and is subject to ongoing deletion policies.

To ensure you preserve your business’s analytics history for comparison and analysis, it is crucial to download your historical data promptly. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps of downloading your data and explain why it’s essential to act swiftly, as high demand near the deadline may hinder successful downloads due to API limits. Don’t let your hard-earned insights slip away.

Let’s keep it simple:

  • Deadline: After June 30, 2024, your GA3 data will disappear forever.
  • No Auto Transfer: Your GA3 data won’t automatically move to Google Analytics 4.
  • Google’s Cleaning Up: Google’s already deleting bits of your data every month.
  • Peak Download Rush: It might get tricky when everyone tries to download their data last minute.
  • Keep Your History: Downloading your GA3 data now is the only way to hold onto your business’s past and compare it with future data.

Step-by-Step Guide to Export Google Analytics 3 Data to Google Sheets

Step 1: Identify the Data You Need

  • Determine which metrics and dimensions are crucial for your reporting. This could include user behavior, acquisition sources, conversion rates, etc.

Step 2: Manual Export (Direct from Google Analytics)

  1. Log into your Google Analytics account and navigate to the report you wish to export.
  2. Customize the report to display the data you need. You can adjust the date range, apply segments, add secondary dimensions, or use filters. Tip: Mark June 30 as your end date since that’s when Universal Analytics hit the pause button on processing data.
  3. Click the ‘Export’ button and select Google Sheets as your destination.
  4. Open Google Sheets to locate your report or access your Google Drive, where the report is stored.
Audience Overview in Universal Analytics

Google Analytics also organizes data into distinct reports. Here’s a brief overview of the critical reports and data you may want to export:

  • Traffic Acquisition Report: Offers a detailed view of where your traffic comes from (organic, direct, referral, and social). Pinpoint your primary traffic sources to refine your marketing strategies.
  • Audience Overview Report: Provides insights into user engagement metrics such as session duration, bounce rate, and pages per session. It also sheds light on your audience’s primary languages, operating systems, and screen setups.
  • Pages Report: Delivers content performance insights, showcasing your most visited pages. Dive into metrics like average time on page, unique pageviews, and exit rate for each page.
  • Goals Overview Report: Focuses on tracking conversions from set goals, which could include actions like page visits, purchases, donations, creating accounts, and more.

Locate these reports and export these individual data sheets into Google Sheets.

Sounds straightforward. It is, but it may require some data analysis skills, a good understanding of GA3, and lots of patience. If you intend to download a substantial amount of Google Analytics data, be prepared for a rather lengthy process. Imagine managing numerous individual reports, each with its distinct data range, segments, and metrics. It is all worth the time and effort.

Once your reports are ready, exporting the raw data is the next step. It can be quite time-consuming, with even experienced digital marketers taking a couple of days to complete this task. While it’s not completely ruled out as an option, it may not be the most efficient way to save a significant amount of GA3 data.

This is where Add-ons come in and work their magic. Google Sheets has a thriving community of developers and marketers using it, resulting in a wide range of integrations. To access these integrations, go to Extensions, Add Extension, and search for the specific data connection you require. The chances of not finding what you need are pretty slim, thanks to the extensive options available.

Step 3: Using Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets

  1. Create a new Google Sheet and go to ‘Extensions’> ‘Add-ons’> ‘Get add-ons.’
  2. Search for the Google Analytics add-on and install it.
  3. Configure the add-on by accessing it from the ‘Add-ons’ menu, selecting ‘Create new report,’ and specifying your data requirements.
  4. Run the report to pull data directly into your Google Sheet.
GA3 Data Export
GA3 Data Export

The Google Spreadsheets add-on simplifies the process significantly compared to exporting reports one by one. Yet, it still demands understanding the specific dimensions and metrics you wish to preserve, along with crafting these reports to secure your GA data effectively. As mentioned earlier, this approach can be pretty labor-intensive. A solid grasp of Google Analytics and web analytics is required to determine the most valuable data to keep.

Once you’ve downloaded and exported your data, it’s time to preserve and analyze it. Employ a tool that offers pre-built reports tailored to various marketing and business scenarios, which automates your GA3 reporting process. Manually importing downloaded data means you can’t set up automatic report scheduling or compare your GA3 data with GA4 side by side. Each time you want updated data, you must create and import new reports into Google Sheets.

Swydo’s integration with Google Sheets simplifies tracking your historical GA3 data, guaranteeing your analytics journey continues smoothly. Here’s how:

Integrating Google Sheets with Swydo

Step 1: Prepare Your Spreadsheet

Make sure that your Google Sheets data is well-organized and properly formatted. Swydo needs clear and structured data to generate meaningful reports. This entails neatly arranging your metrics, dimensions, and other relevant data into columns and labeling them appropriately, like below.

Swydo Google Sheets Example
Example Spreadsheet

Follow this step-by-step guide to prepare your spreadsheet for Swydo’s Google Sheets Integration.

Step 2: Connect Google Sheets to Swydo

  1. Log into your Swydo account and create a new report or widget.
  2. Choose ‘Google Sheets’ as your data source. You’ll be prompted to connect to your Google account if you haven’t already done so.
  3. Select the specific spreadsheet containing your data. Swydo will then access the sheet, allowing you to use this data in your reports.

Step 3: Customize Your Report

  • With your data imported, you can now customize your report in Swydo. This includes selecting specific metrics to display, customizing the layout, and applying filters to highlight the most relevant data.

Step 4: Refreshing Data

  • Swydo allows for automatic data refreshes, ensuring your reports always reflect the most current data.
Refreshing Google Sheets Data in Swydo

Step 5: Share Your Insights

  • Once your report is polished and ready, share it with your clients or team. Swydo offers sharing options, including direct email, downloadable PDFs, and live online reports.

Automate Your GA3 Reporting with Swydo

In conclusion, if you’re still using Universal Analytics and haven’t migrated to GA4, acting quickly is crucial. Data collection has stopped, and all existing data will be deleted by June 30, 2024. To preserve your valuable analytics history, you must download your data promptly.

Not exporting your GA3 data means you will lose historical data, face limitations in analysis and reporting, and miss out on valuable opportunities for optimization and strategic insights.

To export your Google Analytics 3 data to Google Sheets, follow our step-by-step guide. Identify the data you need, manually export it from Google Analytics, or use the Google Analytics Add-on for Google Sheets. Alternatively, consider using Swydo’s integration with Google Sheets for a more streamlined and automated reporting process.

Swydo and Google Sheets Reporting - Making Data Reporting Easy

By integrating Google Sheets with Swydo, you can ensure that your analytics journey continues smoothly. Prepare your spreadsheet correctly, connect it to Swydo, customize your report, set up automatic data refreshes, and share your insights with clients or team members.

With Swydo’s automation capabilities and flexibility in importing and reporting on data from various sources in Google Sheets, you’ll save time while gaining deeper insights into your marketing performance.

Don’t let your hard-earned insights slip away; take action to preserve your GA3 data before it’s too late.

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Love data digging? Tune in to Spreadsheet Sorcery: A Google Sheets Guide For the Aspiring Wizard

Time to level up your Google Sheets game. In this spotlight, we speak to Matt Greenwood about his spreadsheet wizardry talk at brightonSEO 2022. So, if you’re looking for ways to take your spreadsheets to the next level, here’s the presentation deck!

Tell us more about your presentation Spreadsheet sorcery: A Google Sheets Guide For the Aspiring Wizard and what you are going to unravel.

I pitched the talk after attending last year’s brightonSEO and hearing people in the crowd around me feeling confused and a bit lost when listening to some of the more advanced spreadsheet presentations – so I wanted to try and cater to that audience and give them some easy ways to up their spreadsheet game. It’s about taking that next step as a beginner user – someone who’s got to grips with the basics and is looking for ways to start leveraging the power of spreadsheets.

When did you start using Google Sheets and how has your experience with it changed over the years?

Like most people, spreadsheets have been something I’ve been using for years, but without stepping beyond the basics. It was only when I started at Future that I started exploring ways to do more with Google Sheets and began to see the possibilities. Since then I’ve become the go-to spreadsheet guy on our team and an advocate for not wasting time if we don’t have to!

Your go-to resources for learning Google Sheets?

Ben Collins – Weekly Google Sheets Tips
Google Workspace Learning Center
Leila Gharani – Learn Google Sheets @ xelplus.com

What tips do you have for attendees to maximize their time on-site at brighton SEO?

The conference is huge – so trying to catch everything isn’t feasible. Plan your day ahead of time with the schedule or the app – prioritize the talks you want to hear the most, but don’t be afraid to try something new. There’s so much on offer from super-technical to super-inspiring, it’s always a great way to learn new things and meet new people. Don’t forget to look at the speakers’ slides or recordings after the event, most speakers will share them so you can reference them later.

What presentations are you most interested in attending/speakers you are most interested to hear and why?

I’m a sucker for a fun title, so Alice Rowan’s talk ‘What the (cluster)f*ck? Convince Google you’re an expert and plan your content faster‘ is definitely up there. I always try to see something that will give me a creative kick too, so Jo Walters talk, ‘How to think differently, get out of a rut and generate new ideas’ is a must!

What are your responsibilities at Future PLC and what makes work exciting for you?

I work in the Audience team at Future – we look after a huge collection of brands so making sure we’re able to maximize the amount of time our team of experts can spend actually generating insight is crucial. My role is to help get the most out of our data, reporting, and systems to enable our crack team of SEO ninjas to get on with being awesome. Whether that’s through simplifying existing workflows, creating new ones to close the gap between questions and insights or just sharing the right formula for their use case. Being helpful is always a nice feeling, so being able to deliver great solutions to annoying problems is a pretty exciting way to spend a work day.

What are the most interesting trends in digital marketing now?

There are few things more obvious in SEO than Google putting the user first. The more advanced their algorithms become, the more they can distinguish between content targeted at helping people – and content that’s just trying to rank. If we look at the huge strides we’ve seen in the last 10 years in this area, what could our jobs as SEOs look like in another 10 years? For my money, it’s all about producing expert, helpful content for the right audience.

We’re seeing Google try and answer the simple stuff in the SERP without needing a click, so what can we offer as brands that the SERP can’t?

MATT GREENWOOD, AUDIENCE OPS, FUTURE PLC

What are the top 5 tools or apps you use almost every day and why? 

  • Google Sheets
  • BigQuery – For all your big data needs
  • Slack – Essential for our global teams across multiple time zones
  • Twitter – Keeping up with SEO Twitter
  • Parse.ly – Real-time dashboarding for publishers

What was your worst job and what did you learn from it?

My worst job was definitely in the higher education sector – I was responsible for marketing a project to students. Despite many attempts to explain it, the management simply refused to understand the audience it was supposed to be targeting and so the project ended up just being more of the same rather than the new and exciting offering it could have been. It taught me that knowing and understanding your audience is absolutely key – and that helping other people understand is half the battle.

What advice would you give yourself when you first started digital advertising?

Don’t be afraid to get stuck in – no one is an expert in everything and they all started from the beginning. Ask for help when you need it and make room for learning something new. If something feels like a waste of time – it probably is, try and find a way to speed it up or even better, automate it.

Matt Greenwood, Future PLC

Matt started in the SEO industry 4 years ago, finding ways to apply his knowledge of photography and gaming to Future’s specialist sites like Digital Camera World and GamesRadar+. Over that time he developed a passion for problem-solving with spreadsheets, whether it be automating regular reporting work or speeding up the systems and processes that were holding teams back. He now works primarily on building data pipelines and processes to power reporting across the business.

Leverage your Google Sheets reporting with Swydo 

Turn rows of spreadsheet data into concise reports and readable visualizations with Swydo’s Google Sheets reporting. Track your SEO and marketing campaign and any excel data with CSV files in one Swydo report or dashboard. From Google Ads to Facebook and TikTok Ads, you can now track any platform, CRM, and any internal company data together with all your important marketing stack.

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