[UA] Set up Analytics for a website (Universal Analytics) [Legacy]

Create an Analytics account

Your first step is to set up an Analytics account, unless you already have one. Skip to creating a property unless you want to create a separate account for this website. For example, you might want to create another account if this website belongs to a separate business.

1. In Admin, in the Account column, click Create Account.
2. Provide an account name. Configure the data-sharing settings to control which data you share with Google.
3. Click Next to add the first property to the account.

 Create a property

1. Are you continuing from "Create an Analytics account", above? If so, skip to step 2.  Otherwise,
   • In Admin, look at the Account column to make sure that you've selected the right account. Then, in the Property column, click Create Property.
2. Enter a name for the property (e.g. "My Business, Inc website") and select the reporting time zone and currency. If a visitor comes to your website on a Tuesday in their time zone, but it's Monday in your time zone, the visit is recorded as having occurred on Monday.
   • If you choose a time zone that honors Daylight Savings Time, Analytics automatically adjusts for time changes. Use Greenwich Mean Time if you don't want to adjust for Daylight Savings Time.
   • Changing the time zone only affects data going forward. If you change the time zone for an existing property, you may see a flat spot or a spike in your data, caused by the time shift forwards or backwards, respectively. Report data may refer to the old time zone for a short period after you update your settings, until Analytics servers have processed the change.
3. Click Show advanced options (below the property-setup fields).
   
4. Turn on the switch for Create a Universal Analytics property.
5. Enter the website URL. Select the protocol (http or https).
   Most domain hosts support only UTF-8 characters in URLs. Use either UTF-8 characters or punycode for symbols and any non-UTF-8 characters (including Cyrillic characters) in your domain name. Try a punycode converter for help with this.
6. At this point, choose to create
   • Both a Google Analytics 4 property and a Universal Analytics property. This option
     • Sets up a parallel Google Analytics 4 property that collects data alongside your Universal Analytics property. Once you add the tag for the Google Analytics 4 property to your site, data will be sent to both properties.  You can switch back and forth between properties using the property selector or Admin screen.
     • Establishes a connection between the two properties that allows you to migrate configuration settings from your Universal Analytics property to your Google Analytics 4 property later on.
       How to identify each property: If you named your property "Example" in step 2, your Universal Analytics property will be named "Example (UA-1234567)" and your Google Analytics 4 property will be named "Example - GA4 (98765432)".
   • Only a Universal Analytics property. Choose this option if you only want a Universal Analytics property.
     If you need a "UA-" tracking ID, choose this option.
     
7. Click Next and provide information about your business. 
8. Click Create.

Accept the Analytics Terms of Service and the Data Processing Amendment if prompted, and click Finish.

Set up data collection (i.e. add the Google tag to your site)