Google Analytics “Change History” – New Feature!

Finally! For a long time the analytics community has been asking the Google Analytics team for a way to track changes made to accounts, properties and profiles.

Just like the AdWord’s Change History feature, Google Analytics admin users will now have a Change History feature that will record who did what and when. This will ease the very frustrating moments of looking at your Google Analytics account and encountering changes or deletion of filters, profiles, goals or other settings without knowing who did it and when.

The new Change History for Google Analytics will roll out in the next few weeks to all users.  You’ll be able to find it under the “Admin” area and it looks like this:

You will also be able to search these changes. This will allow admins to look for specific users, dates, or specific changes that they’re inquiring about.

A small but welcomed feature 🙂

The Extra Steps You Should Take

There a couple of steps you can take so that you can better understand your users across your organization and also promote accountability.

Avoid Personal Emails

Using personal emails can sometimes create confusion on remembering whom them email belongs to. Most company emails are easy to identify right down to an individual – i.e. John.S@my-company.com, Karen.Kringle@your-comapany.com. Personal emails, on the other hand, are not as straight forward – i.e jo224@gmail.com or kaki-analytics@gmail.com.

Making this differentiation is best practice and will help you understand who has access, and who should not have access.

Restrict Administrator Privileges

Give administrator access only to those who need it. By default, most people ask for admin access because they feel they won’t get access to features or key reports.  But really, user access allows access to all reports and features necessary for typical reporting.

In some cases, users with good intentions change filters or settings upsetting historical data.

We hope you enjoy these new features.

Do you have any other ideas you think Google Analytics should implement?