Google has a pretty big change coming to Analytics in late May and website owners need to be prepared. Google Analytics now has a feature called “Data Retention Controls” that will give account holders the ability to set the amount of time before user-level and event-level data stored by Google Analytics is automatically deleted from Google Analytics’ servers.

These new data settings will officially go into effect on May 25, 2018, which is the same date that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes live.

What Data is Affected?

• Any user and event data that is older than your retention setting will be marked for permanent deletion.
• Deletion will affect the use of segmentation, some custom reports, and secondary dimensions.
• Reports based on aggregated data will not be affected.