Property Migrations for Google Analytics

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The Google Analytics team introduced a long-awaited feature to allow administrators to migrate their properties into a new or existing account. This finally allows companies to bring their orphaned properties containing their mobile apps or any properties that have accidentally been created in separate accounts into a single account. This long awaited feature solves a number of administrative issues. By migrating all of a company's properties into a single account administrators can more easily manage user permissions globally to add, remove and change permissions in seconds. Other administrative tasks such as adding a lowercase filter or excluding internal traffic globally can not be done in a few clicks.  In addition for GA360 customer, you can further utilize the GA360 roll-up reporting feature to combine all of your properties into a new global view!

How do I move properties to a different account?

If you have two accounts that you want to combine properties from you can migrate them in just a few steps. First things first, you need to have Manage Users , Edit , Collaborate , Read & Analyze access to both accounts. This is necessary in case a mistake is made - you can then move the property back to it's original account.
  1. Go into the Admin section in your Google Analytics Account. Click on "Property Settings" of the desired property you want to move. Click on the "Move Property" button.
  2. Choose the destination account. You have the option of keeping the existing property and view permissions or replacing the existing property and permissions with the destination account's permissions. Click on the checkbox to Confirm Changes and select ‘Start move’.
  3. That's it! Property C shown above is now listed under Account 1.
 

What are the benefits of moving properties?

  1. NO historical data will be lost. Everything from Property settings, views associated with the property, assets associated with the views (custom reports, segments, goals, annotations, dashboards), AdWords/Adsense/Ad Exchange will all remain intact when the property is moved. Google did a great job with this feature!
  2. Your existing Google Analytics Tracking ID (UA-XXXXX-Y) that is hardcoded on your site or in Google Tag Manager will not change so there will be NO need to retag.
  3. In the past, if you wanted to create a Rollup Property as a GA360 customer, you had to ensure all properties lived in the same account. Now, you have the flexibility to move properties into any account.
 

What happens to User Permissions?

When you move a property, you have two options:
  • Replace existing property and view permissions with permissions of the destination account.
This overrides any existing permissions applied in the property you are moving with the permissions that exist in the destination account. If a user did not have any access to the old property, but has Manage Users and Edit access in the destination account, they will inherit those new Manage Users and Edit permissions as a result of the migration.  
  1. Keep existing property and view permissions.
The current property and view permissions are copied along with the property. Any users who have account-level access in the source account will inherit property-level only access in the destination account. They will not be able to see other properties in the destination account, unless you update their access.

GA360 Specific Notes

If you are using the standard(free version) of GA you are all set! If you are using GA360 (Premium) note that the Source and Destination account must belong to the same organization. If the Source account is linked to a 360 Suite organization, but the Destination account is not, you will not be able to move the property. If your property is linked with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), you will need to unlink before moving the property and relink after the property is successfully moved. Rollup Properties cannot be moved into other accounts. Additionally, if the Source property is linked to a Rollup Property, you will need to unlink the Source property from the Rollup Property before you move.   Still have questions/comments? Leave a comment or send us an e-mail: gethelp@analyticspros.com !