Switching To Google Universal Analytics - Data Loss?

Question

We currently have a marketing site that still has the old, classic version of Analytics installed on it.

We also have a subdomain of that main site that contains the new, universal analytics installed on it.

I've taken over for someone else who was previously employed here, and I want to update our main, marketing site with the improved Universal Analytics code so we're running the same code on both, but the main site is many years old, and we have a lot of historical data that I can't lose.

I have been under the impression that we would lose all of our past data if I took the old, classic code out, and replaced it with the new universal code that Google recommends we use instead.

I just found a link here: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/faq#lose-data where it says that historical data will NOT be lost, but I've also found some articles saying that historical data can be lost, so I'm unsure how to proceed.

Maybe those older articles were written before Google changed the process?

Anyway, I'm just hoping to get a clear answer on if our data will be safe if I switch to the new Universal Analytics Code? Just to be clear, the Universal analytics code IS shown in our account when I click on "Tracking Info" > "Tracking Code" in admin. (In other words, Google is telling us "here is the code you should use". But we haven't updated our existing code to reflect that yet.)

Thank you!

Answer 1

I used it on 3 of my sites. Nothing was lost, all data stayed. If the tracking code setting shows analytics.js code, your account was transferred into Universal automatically. What you need to do: replace the old ga.js code with new analytics.js code. But - turn on demographic features in Property and add some code into GATC following the instructions.

Answer 2

As the document states (and I believe it's up to date), you will not lose historical data. If you do have issues, you can perhaps try this Google forum.