Have you ever logged into Google Analytics and noticed that the settings of your most important profile have been changed? Maybe you have worked with an agency or 2 and you don't know who is adding and removing users to your account. Well the answer to your problems is long overdue finally here. Google announced that they will be rolling out a new change history feature in Google Analytics over the next few weeks which will allow administrators to see who made changes to the account and when.
Key Highlights
change history data will be available for 180 days from the time the change is made
you must be an administrator to see the change history data
the change history has a search function that allows the administrator to isolate specific type of changes that were made or all of the changes made by a specific user
The change history table has 3 columns:
- The Date column tells you the date and time of the changes that were made
- The Email column tells you the email address of the Analytics user that made the change
- The Activity column tells you the section of Analytics that was changed (e.g., account, user, profile, goal, filter), and the specifics of the changes that were made (e.g., added to account, created, deleted)
What The Change History Tab Will Not Tell You
If you have multiple users that login to Analytics using the same email address, you won't be able to determine who made the change. For changes prior to 180 days, and to log notes within Google Analytics for any other significant changes such as events that may have caused a spike in conversions or traffic, I recommend using the Annotations feature, you can find out exactly how to add annotations to the Google Analytics graph here. Changes that are not related to the interface such as advanced segmentations or custom reports will not appear as part of the change history either.
The change history (when available) can be found by clicking on the admin tab and then selecting the account which will reveal multiple tabs for administrative functions such as managing users, filters, data sources, and account settings. For detailed screen shots on where the new feature will appear and what it will look like you can visit the Google Analytics Help Center.
As this feature is rolled out over the next few weeks I would be interested to know if this is a feature that you would use and if there have been any situations in the past where you wish this feature was available that would have made you life a lot easier?
