Should you get a new Google Analytics account if your site has a new domain after a site redesign/new development?

[TheOceanAgency]

We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change.  Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?

[TheOceanAgency]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I think it's safe to say that we're sticking with the old Analytics account.

[joshcanhelp]

Theresa,

I'm going to support the two answers here: creating a new account is not a good use of time.

The main reason, in my mind, is just that you wouldn't have anything to compare the new site with. If you have new code, new content, new everything, it's important to compare the changes with the old site to make sure you made positive changes.

The best example I can give of a scenarios where you'd want that historic data is with any page on the site that already ranks well. After the page changed, did traffic increase? Decrease? Time of page? It's good to know how these were changed.

I'll also add, historic analytic data can help you find problems caused by the move. Disallowed robots.txt from the test site? Structure issues? Many of these can be found out from looking at your analytic data and having a baseline is important.

Hope that helps!

[JamesNorquay]

Hi, I would not advise on setting up a new account, to be honest you can easily transfer the code from the old account to the new account you can even use new code in GA.

do not set up a totally new account as you will loose historic data from the account.

[cfguti]

No,

if you can use the old one, you can compare if all the migration tasks are ok. If you change the analytics account you can't compare you new traffic data with the old one.

Bye.