Google retires old Analytics version

Over a year since releasing its new version of Google Analytics, Google has decided that it's now time to stop offering the legacy version.

It had been supporting both versions since the release of the newer one, which was first provided to users in April 2011. Google has been running them side by side, so that users could inform the company of any bugs that had them rushing back to the old version.

However, now the company has decided that the time has come to fully transition to the new version. It said in a blog post that as of tomorrow, it will be removing links to the previous version.

The new version has a number of features that Google hopes will ease the pain of those who have been clinging to the legacy analytics platform; features like real-time analytics; social-media reports to help with marketing initiatives; mobile reports that keep track of mobile visitors; and content experiments, which allow companies to show different versions of their pages to different users.

"We have received some really great feedback over the last year on what's working and what's not; we've been listening very closely and doing our best to incorporate the feedback and ideas," Google said. The company is asking that Analytics users continue to report on what is good and bad about the product.