Documentation / Importing Historical Data / Universal Analytics

Import from Universal Analytics

Export the All Pages report from your Universal Analytics (GA3) property and bring your historical pageview data into GhostlyX.

Universal Analytics has been discontinued

Google shut down Universal Analytics properties in July 2024. If you still have access to your historical UA data through Google Analytics or a previous export, follow this guide to bring that data into GhostlyX.

1

Export the All Pages report from UA

GhostlyX reads the All Pages report from Universal Analytics. This report lives under Behaviour, not Acquisition or Channels. Follow the steps below to export it.

1

Open your UA property

Sign in to Google Analytics and switch to your Universal Analytics property (it has a "UA-" tracking ID).

2

Go to Behaviour

In the left sidebar, expand Behaviour, then expand Site Content, and click All Pages.

3

Set your date range

Use the date picker in the top right to select the full date range you want to import. Choose the earliest date your site was active through to the date UA stopped collecting (July 2024 at the latest).

4

Show the maximum number of rows

At the bottom of the report, click Show rows and set it to 5000 (the maximum). If you have more than 5,000 pages, you will need to export multiple segments.

5

Export as CSV

Click the Export button near the top of the page and choose CSV. This downloads a file named something like Analytics All Pages YYYYMMDD-YYYYMMDD.csv.

Expected CSV format

Your CSV should contain a Page column and a Pageviews column. GhostlyX reads these two columns and ignores everything else.

# Google Analytics header rows (ignored)
Page,Pageviews,Unique Pageviews,Avg. Time on Page,...
/,12450,8320,00:01:45,...
/blog/,4200,3100,00:02:12,...
/pricing/,1980,1540,00:00:58,...
/about/,870,690,00:01:30,...

Do not export from Acquisition or Channels. Those reports use channel names (Organic Search, Direct, etc.) as row labels, not page paths. The importer will reject all rows because channel names do not start with a /.

2

Upload to GhostlyX

1

Open your site dashboard

Go to your GhostlyX dashboard and open the site you want to import data into.

2

Click Import Data

In the site toolbar, click the Import Data button.

3

Select source

Choose Universal Analytics (GA3) from the source dropdown.

4

Upload the CSV

Click Choose file and select the CSV you downloaded. Then click Start import.

5

Wait for processing

The import runs in the background. Track progress on the Import Data page.