Koozai > Blog > Changing Website Domain in Google Analytics

Changing Website Domain in Google Analytics

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Here’s a quick and easy guide to help you manage a domain change in Google Analytics. Most people will be able to set up Google Analytics. But do you actually know what to do if you wanted to change domain and keep your Google Analytics history? Luckily it’s nice and simple!

I’m going to imagine that your new domain is just going live and you’re redirecting your old domain to the new one, so that there is only one version of the site live at a time. This new domain should have exactly the same Google Analytics code as you had on your previous site. If you need any amendments to customise it for any reason then that is fine, as long as you have the same UA number.

As the code is still there the results will still be coming in, so if you’re really lazy you don’t have to do any more! However, it would obviously be beneficial to ensure everything ties in and is named accurately so that everyone can understand. So you will need to update the associated website URLs, Account and Profile settings.

Update Domain URL in Google Analytics

From your Account Overview page click Edit alongside the profile on the right hand side – this needs to be done for all profiles, bad luck if you have lots! From the Profile Settings page click Edit in the top right. Here you can change the website URL to your new one.

Update Google Analytics Profile Names

Profile names in Google Analytics can be changed in the Profile Settings area as above. From your overview page click Edit alongside the profile details, then click Edit in the top right again. Try to give your Profiles useful names that help other people understand what data is available here.

One useful thing I like to do with Profile names is put an asterisk in front of the most important ones that are used most often. This puts them at the top of the list and makes navigation quicker.

Change the Google Analytics Account Name

If you need to update the name of the Google Analytics account as well, you need to navigate to your Account Settings / Overview. This is easy to find if you’re not already on it – it’s linked to through ‘Analytics Settings’ in the top left-hand corner when you’re anywhere within the account. Once you’ve gone in to this section just click the (Edit Account Settings) link and re name the Account as required.

Once you have changed domain it would be a good idea to check if Google Analytics is working, paying particular attention to the Hostnames report in case any other URLs are actively hosting your content, such as your staging site or old domain.

Changing the names and URLs in your account settings will not affect your data in any way, as Google reports on the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier, the bit after the domain name) rather than the URL in the Google Analytics Reports. For more tips on Google Analytics check out our other Google Analytics blog posts or our Google Analytics consulting.

Responses

  1. adi avatar

    thank you,,,nice arcticle

  2. […] You’ll also want to change your domain name in Google Analytics. Fortunately, GA uses and ID for it’s tracking methodology, so you won’t lose tracking because it’s not domain specific. However, you should change your property URL for best practices. Click this link for a great post on how to change your domain URL in Google. […]

  3. Jessica avatar

    I’m about to cry of happiness because I’m about to move all my content to a new domain and wasn’t sure how to handle Google Analytics. YOU DA BEST.

  4. […] been sure whether it would lead to historical data being deleted from the account. I could find just one good clear article on the subject, by Anna Lewis from […]

  5. […] If you’re porting over your old Google Analytics code to your new site, you will still be tracking all of your site’s data; however, you will want to update your GA account so you know which insights are coming from the new domain as opposed to the old one. Things you will need to update include your domain URL, profile names and account name.Here’s a more detailed guide of where these can be found. […]

  6. […] Change Website Domain in Google Analytics […]

  7. alberto avatar
    alberto

    Why is your number changing from 08454851219 to 08454851271?

    1. Mike Essex avatar

      Hi Alberto, our number changes based on how people arrive on the site so we can better track how people found us when they call.

  8. nyenius avatar

    Thankyou very much, this simple article helps me a lot! ^_^

  9. Martin avatar

    Hi Anna,

    im trying to change the domain https://transalex.de to https://www.transalex.de in google analytics but don´t find the properly option. Do you have a solution. Many thanks

    Martin

    1. Ned Wells avatar

      Hello Martin,

      I’ve just written a follow up article to this, which should contain the information you need. Please check out this link: https://www.cicada-online.com/blog/2012/11/how-to-change-website-domain-in-google-analytics/

  10. Ned Wells avatar

    Hi Anna, this is a really helpful article.

    I have a slightly different situation I’m dealing with, and would really appreciate your insight before I make any changes, if that’s OK.

    Basically my client’s GA account is set up for the http version of the site. But the http version redirects to the www version of the site. This means that things like In-Page Analytics don’t work properly.

    I want to change the URLs in the account settings to the www version of the site. Can I safely assume that if I do this, I won’t lose historical data?

    Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this!
    Ned

  11. Asli avatar
    Asli

    I bought a domain name via my blogger account and my blog is still in transition. I have updated the URL in my account settings, but my google analytics data is not normal. Blogger stats are fine, according to blogger stats I haven’t lost any traffic (600 pageviews a day), but analytics stats show only few (7 pageviews) and my bouncerate is incredibly and unusally high. Is this normal, how long will it take for analytics to show more accurate results? I would appreciate your help.

  12. Mike Essex avatar

    Thanks Joe, we are looking in to the image issue on this post and thanks for the feedback on subdomains.

  13. Joe avatar
    Joe

    All of your screen shots are broken.

    Also, you need to make sure that you change the subdomain in your GATC if you are explicity calling _setDomainName.

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