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A former employee had Google Analytics for multiple websites setup under his personal gmail account. We suspect that he (upon being let go) removed/disassociated those analytics websites from his personal Gmail account. We have searched through our Google Apps email addresses to verify that the website analytics we're looking for are indeed not housed under the Apps addresses, which leads us to where we are currently.

  • What are our options for regaining access to our analytics history?
  • If he, in fact, did remove them from his personal gmail account, does Google still have these on their server somewhere so we can re-link them to an appropriate Google Apps account within our organization?

Some helpful information:

  • We do have access to the UA-XXXXXXX-XX identifier for each website
  • We do have access to FTP to upload any file Google may need in order to properly verify domain ownership/management authority
  • We do have access to DNS to create any records Google may need in order to properly verify domain ownership/management authority

Thank you for your comments. Also, if there's an official support channel or an option of paid support through Google where we can pay to have this resolved, I'm all ears. So far, I've been unable to locate anything along those lines.

NOTE: I have posted on the analytics help forum over at Google, but no response yet and another employee has been attempting to get some level of support over there for nearly a month without luck. I'm not hopeful that my post will be responded to by Google themselves.

Sounds to me like it's time for Google to offer a paid analytics solution for corporations and agencies (that doesn't cost $150,000), so that we can obtain some level of support from Google for our clients' accounts. Right now, we're not even sure if our clients' analytics data even exists anymore.

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You may be out of luck or you will have to jump through some hoops to get access. Try this form, and be prepared to prove that you own the domain.

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  • I wouldn't be too hopeful about that form. Note that it's for REgaining access to an account(which wasn't yours in the first place). When you combine that with the fact there isn't an account transfer process anyway, it seems highly unlikely they're going to do it for you manually. Try it if you want, but also make other plans. I suggest just starting a new profile in the immediate, then see if you can get hold of the previous employee; if you're lucky, he still has the data and can at least export it for reference.
    – Su'
    Jan 16, 2012 at 21:01
  • It's worth a shot. I've filled out the form for at least one of the websites and we'll see where that gets me. I have a contact at Google through my dealings in past years that I'm attempting. If I find out anything that I can share publicly (with his blessing), I'll post it here. Thanks guys!
    – Will Ashworth
    Jan 16, 2012 at 22:01
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Have you checked the computer he used to see if he saved the password for his personal/other google accounts - this may save you some time, at least you could re associate or export the data.

I've had this happen to me though. Things do get missed, its entirely possible it wasn't intentional or that there is in fact a long forgotten company google account (there was a period when apps didn't work with analytics) so it may be worth dropping him a line if the parting wasn't adversarial.

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    Also it maybe worth implementing a second analytics tag in the meantime so at least you're not loosing any data in the meantime.
    – toomanyairmiles
    Jan 16, 2012 at 22:55
  • I've thought about a second tag so that we're at least capturing stats, but heard it makes page loads extremely slow. And yes, the parting was adversarial...unfortunately.
    – Will Ashworth
    Jan 17, 2012 at 0:07
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    Ouch. I'd try some forensics on his workstation and see what you can recover, if the machine wasn't erased then his profile data should be intact. I've done two tags before and provided the tag is in the footer it's not too horrible, not ideal I'll grant you.
    – toomanyairmiles
    Jan 17, 2012 at 8:12

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