382,097 websites, 2.5% of all homepages, still load Universal Analytics, the old version of Google Analytics that stopped recording data in July 2023. Among the 500,000 most visited homepages, 6.6% carry the old tag with no sign of its replacement.
Analysis of 15,470,478 homepages · the public HTTP Archive crawl, September 2026
Key Findings
- 1.382,097 websites, 2.5% of all homepages, still load Universal Analytics, the version of Google Analytics that stopped recording data in July 2023.
- 2.4.9% of websites that use Google Analytics still load the old Universal Analytics tag.
- 3.5.3% of Google Analytics websites outside the 10 million most visited still load Universal Analytics, more than twice the 2.2% rate among the 10,000 most visited.
- 4.6.6% of the 500,000 most visited homepages carry a Universal Analytics ID and no ID for GA4, the version that replaced it.
- 5.96% of websites still loading Universal Analytics sit outside the 1 million most visited.
Summary
A garden center owner opens Google Analytics to see how the spring sale went and finds a flat line. The last recorded visit is from July 2023. The website has kept loading its tracking code every day since, but that code sends data to a product Google shut down, and three years of visits, form fills and sales were never recorded.
Universal Analytics was Google's analytics product for most of the last decade. Google replaced it with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and stopped processing Universal Analytics data in July 2023. A website that still loads only the old tag has had no Google Analytics data since then, and its owner may not know until someone goes looking.
382,097 websites still load the Universal Analytics tag, 2.5% of all homepages and 4.9% of the websites that use Google Analytics. Some also run GA4 and simply never removed the old code. Many do not: among the 500,000 most visited homepages, 6.6% show a Universal Analytics ID and no GA4 ID at all.
What we measured
We used the September 2026 HTTP Archive crawl, a public project that loads 15,470,478 homepages in a real browser and records the technologies each one uses. We counted homepages that load Google Analytics, 7,752,292 in all, and those among them that load the Universal Analytics version, and split the results by how popular each website is. For the 500,000 most visited homepages we also read the page code for Universal Analytics IDs and GA4 IDs.
Every Google Analytics account has an ID written into the website's tracking code. Universal Analytics IDs start with "UA-" and GA4 IDs start with "G-". A homepage with a UA- ID and no G- ID shows no sign of the current version of Google Analytics. Popularity groups come from Google's Chrome UX Report, which ranks websites by real Chrome visits.
382,097 websites still load a dead analytics tag
That is 2.5% of all homepages, one in forty. Counted only among websites that use Google Analytics, 4.9% still load the old tag. Each of those websites sends a request to a retired product on every page view, adding load time for nothing.
For the websites where Universal Analytics is the only analytics tag, the cost is bigger than a wasted request. Every marketing decision since mid-2023 has been made without traffic data, and any report that relies on Google Analytics shows nothing after the shutdown.
Less-visited websites hold on to the old tag longest
The more traffic a website gets, the more likely someone noticed the switch to GA4 and cleaned up. Among the 10,000 most visited websites, 2.2% of those running Google Analytics still load Universal Analytics. Beyond the top 10 million, 5.3% do, more than twice the rate.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 15,470,478 homepages · the public HTTP Archive crawl, September 2026
| Website popularity | Homepages loading Universal Analytics | Share of all homepages | Share of Google Analytics homepages |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 most visited | 95 | 1.3% | 2.2% |
| 10k to 100k | 1,113 | 1.7% | 2.9% |
| 100k to 1 million | 13,781 | 1.9% | 3.6% |
| 1 million to 10 million | 192,633 | 2.5% | 4.8% |
| Beyond the top 10 million | 174,475 | 2.5% | 5.3% |
| All websites | 382,097 | 2.5% | 4.9% |
In absolute numbers the less-visited web dominates. Websites outside the top 1 million account for 367,108 of the 382,097 homepages still loading Universal Analytics, 96% of the total. On less-visited websites fewer people check the reports that would reveal an empty account, so a dead tag can run for years unnoticed.
6.6% of popular websites show no sign of the newer Google Analytics
Reading the page code of the 500,000 most visited homepages shows how much old tracking is left behind. 10% still contain a Universal Analytics ID somewhere in the page, often in old snippets, theme settings or tag manager setups. About a third of those also carry a GA4 ID, and for them the old code is only clutter.
The 6.6% with a Universal Analytics ID and no GA4 ID are the websites to worry about. Unless they measure traffic with a different tool, they have been running without analytics since mid-2023, and these are among the most visited websites on the internet.
What this means for website owners
View the source of your homepage (right-click, then "View page source") and search for "UA-" and "G-". If you find only UA-, your Google Analytics has recorded nothing since July 2023. Create a GA4 property, add its tag to every page and set up your conversions again. Old Universal Analytics data is gone unless you exported it before Google deleted it.
If you find both, remove the UA- code: it no longer does anything and slows every page. When you redesign or move your website, rebuild tracking from a list of what you need to measure instead of copying old snippets forward. A good website migration service treats analytics as part of the launch checklist, so the new site records data from its first visit.
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<p style="font:14px/1.5 system-ui,sans-serif">Source: <a href="https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/universal-analytics-still-installed">382,097 Websites Still Load a Google Analytics Tag That Stopped Working in 2023 - Suff Digital</a></p>
Cite this study
Suff Digital. (2026). 382,097 Websites Still Load a Google Analytics Tag That Stopped Working in 2023. https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/universal-analytics-still-installed
382,097 Websites Still Load a Google Analytics Tag That Stopped Working in 2023 - Suff Digital - https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/universal-analytics-still-installed
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