An update on Archive-It's integration with Google Analytics
Hello partners,
Google Analytics will upgrade to a new version, called Google Analytics 4 (GA4), on July 1, 2023. This will effectively end Archive-It's integration with Google Analytics going forward. Historical data collected with the prior version of Google Analytics, called Universal Analytics (UA), will remain available as we implement an alternative web analytics feature. We seek your input here to ensure that this change meets your needs and expectations and we apologize for any inconvenience caused in the meantime.
Why is this happening?
Google is transitioning to a new platform to report user behavior across web, mobile, email, and other environments that is incompatible with its longstanding UA platform. GA4 introduces user identification measures that we cannot support because they violate the Internet Archive's Terms of Use regarding end users' privacy and safety rights.
What can I do to protect my data?
We recommend exporting your data from the legacy UA platform. Google maintains that data will be available “for at least six months” after the July 1 deadline to upgrade to GA4. Google will not support reporting this or any other historical data with GA4, whether collected from Archive-It or any other websites that you may track.
What to expect next:
Expect to see further updates from the Archive-It team in this space. Here are instructions for following this post so you can stay informed in real time. We regret that this change may cause a lapse in data collection but we are dedicated to implementing the best possible solution going forward. This includes identifying an alternative, privacy-friendly analytics platform that is easy to use, provides feature parity, and integrates well with existing UA data. We invite users of the current analytics integration to test and provide critical feedback on alternatives like Matomo and Plausible Analytics. You can volunteer to test alternatives through the survey linked above.
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Official comment
Thank you for your patience while we implemented a feature to replace Archive-It's prior integration with Google Analytics. Today we are very pleased to announce the release of Archive-It's self-hosted integration with Plausible Analytics.
Learn more about the new Archive-It account feature and how to get started here: Release: Track access to your web archives with Plausible Analytics.
We continue to explore options to maintain historical data while it is available from Google Analytics. In the meantime, all Archive-It partners may use the new feature to collect new data about access to their accounts, collections, and archived web pages.
Comment actions -
Hi Fara. We will release an alternative to the Google Analytics integration for Archive-It partners very soon and I will post an update here as soon as it is available. Internet Archive staff are currently working to build out support for all of the users of the legacy integration and for new users going forward. Apologies for the delay that this has caused in the meantime.
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