On July 1st, 2023, the Google Analytics integration stops working because of Google retiring the platform. Post Pay Counter supports multiple other visits trackers, but if you are migrating away from using Google Analytics as visits trackers there are some steps you may want to take.

In particular, if you simply switch from Google Analytics to another visits system, the difference in numbers between the two will affect your payments immediately. You can always revert the change, but you also need to take action so that payment figures become correct after switching visits tracker.

Migrate from Google Analytics to Matomo/Plausible Analytics

If you used Google Analytics with PPC and you now have to move to another platform because of the dismissal of Universal Analytics, you can use the wp-cli commands ppc visits export and ppc visits import to move data across. You basically generate a backup of the Google Analytics data in PPC format, and use it to import it into another external visits tracker supported by PPC, such as Matomo or Plausible.

For example, you could run

wp ppc visits export --analytics-platform=ga --output=visits-ga.txt

and then, to import into Matomo for example:

wp ppc visits import --to-analytics-platform=matomo --input=visits-ga.txt

For Plausible the import command is the same, expect that you need to replace matomo with plausible.

You may also revoke the Google Analytics authorization from the Google Analytics/Adsense Status box, so that no more daily update will happen. I recommend keeping the visits data though, in case anything needed adjustment and you needed the historical data stored there.

Migrate from Google Analytics to a WordPress visits counting plugin

PPC doesn’t provide import into other WP plugin visits trackers, as each is different and PPC tracks only total pageviews, while most plugins retain a more detailed view. When you switch from Google to a WP plugin tracker, you will then get a ton of negative due payments in your stats dashboard, because of the mismatch in visits numbers.

The way to fix this is the following:

1. while you still have Google Analytics as visits tracker, settle payments with all your authors. This means that you should pay all your authors before continuing, because balances will get inaccurate before they can get accurate again.
2. if you haven’t already done so, mark all authors as paid for all time. This will reset all due payments to zero.
3. switch from Google Analytics to another visits tracker. This will create a ton of negative balances in the stats dashboard.
4. mark (again) all authors as paid for all time. This will (again) reset all due payments to zero. I suggest to add a note to this transaction, as this is a “fake” payment only with the purpose of restoring stats correctness for the future.

Note: if your site has a lot of posts/authors, you may not be able to mark as paid all authors easily through wp-admin. Use the WP-CLI command ppc mark-as-paid to mark as paid instead.

From there onward, posts will start accumulating new visits and the due payment will update accordingly. You may also revoke the Google Analytics authorization from the Google Analytics/Adsense Status box, so that no more daily update will happen. I recommend keeping the visits data though, in case anything needed adjustment and you needed the historical data stored there.

Further advice/support

Get in touch with us if you are worried about migration and need advice.