Move from account to profile in Google Analytics and keep data

Question

Let's say we have multiple companies with multiple markets each, like example.com, example.fr, example.ch, example2.com, example2.fr and example2.ch. How would this best be arranged in Google Analytics?

It seems to me that the best would be to have example and example2 as different accounts, and have the different markets as profiles under these? I often see all markets under separate accounts though, and I'm wondering if they have a reason for doing this.

Three questions:

1. What is the disadvantages to use different accounts?
2. Can data be compared between accounts?
3. Is it possible to move statistics from an account to a property without loosing data?

Answer 1

How you set up your account structure depends on what data you want to be able to compare. You cannot compare date within two different accounts. So you could either set up multiple properties for the different domains and also an additional property for a rollup of everything and even an additional property for rollup of just example and example2 (so three trackers per site), or you could set up separate views, so one rollup view for all example domains, one rollup view for example2 domains, additional views for each distinct domains, or it might be a combination of both methods. Again it depends on what you want to be able to compare.

To answer your questions though, I alluded to 1 already, 'no' for 2, and assuming you mean property instead of account for 3 then that is also 'no'.