Today I made the STUPID mistake of thinking that I could remove my primary Google Analytics email address and update it with an address that I use more frequently. Guess again! I wound up accidentally deleting a YEAR’S worth of traffic data that I don’t think I can get back. :(
Back to square one! No more Analytic’s highs or lows for the time being…
What Happened?
For well over a year I have been using Google Analytics with no problems. However, the primary email address that the account had was one that I never use and the secondary email was my standard Yahoo account, which I always use. Trying to standardize things, I re-activated a different Google email address that more closely matches my Yahoo one in name (i.e. mark_w_hayward) and I was going to make that the primary. However, STUPIDLY, I assumed that if I deleted the primary address that I would still be able to access all of my Google accounts with the secondary Yahoo address that was available…Well, I learned that hard way that if you delete the primary address all of your data is GONE!
And I did not want anyone else to run into this problem.
I can no longer log into my Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, or Google Documents. Man I am pissed at myself!
Matt Cutts, or anyone from Google Analytics, are you out there? Is there anyway I can retrieve all of that traffic data that has been lost?
If anyone else has any suggestions, please let me know…
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May 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
mark,
email me with how you were able to delete your primary email account.
i quickly checked my google account and could not see a way to delete the primary email
May 13th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hi Coqui - That’s just the problem…if you delete your primary address you will lose all of your data!
May 13th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Mark
That is bad luck. I’m only new to Google Analytics, but thanks for the heads up. I certainly won’t be deleting or changing my email address now!
Kelly
May 14th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Hi Brian [Coqui] - Because I was in a rush to get the post up…I don’t think the description of what happened above is very clear.
Initially I started in Google docs because yesterday afternoon I was going to create some files and share them with some folks that I am working on a project with.
While in Google docs I noticed that Google had defaulted my account to a Gmail account that is for my business and it had bumped my Yahoo account to secondary.
So I thought that I would change the primary account to a Gmail account that I use more often [mark.w.hayward@gmail].
Somehow I wound up in a default area that globally controls all Google services (Google docs, webmaster tools, analytics, etc). Well, when I went to remove (read: delete) the primary I assumed that the Yahoo account would still work until I added the new Gmail address that I wanted to put in…Not so.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I am new to Google Analytics and have learnt a good lesson from your experience. Thanx for sharing