Disclaimer: The title makes it sound much cooler than it actually is.
Even if you’ve never seen a single episode of “How I Met Your Mother”, I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard the 2am rule: Nothing good ever happens after 2am.
It’s a rule that I bitterly regret not following a couple of weeks ago, when a 2:15 am working spree found me accidentally deleting not one, not two, not even three, but four Google Analytics accounts. They were old accounts, but I still needed them. Like, really, really needed. I can’t say the word “really” enough times to adequately express how badly I needed those accounts to not be deleted.
It was, in a word, unfortunate.
I’m not typically one to publicize my idiocy. I usually try to hide it as best as possible. (Even when it’s fairly self-evident. Mea culpa.) The reason I’m airing out my immense bêtise is because, happily, there’s a fix!
As so many before me have done, in a desperate attempt at salvation, I Googled the problem. For the most part the results only contained partial solutions. But by piecing them together, I obtained the the complete fix. And since I was clearly not the only one who had committed the ultimate Analytics fallacy, I thought I would share the wealth.
The first thing you need to make sure to have is an Adwords account that uses the same login details as the Google Analytics account in question. Without the AdWords account, there’s not much you can do. It would appear that Google only publishes contact details for their paid services – AdWords, Apps, and the like. Analytics being free, it’s impossible to call Google through the platform. “Don’t be evil” my hindquarters…
Log into your Adwords account and note your Customer ID. (The ten-digit code in the top right-hand corner of the page.) Then visit Google’s Worldwide Phone Support page and find your country. You could theoretically email or chat with the Googles during normal business hours, but I was feeling much too dramatic and harried to wait for a response that might take days to arrive.
Call Google – if you’re lucky you’ll get my new best friend David, who was supremely helpful. And extremely talented at deciphering panicked babble. After you outline the issue, you’ll receive an email from the Google requesting the UA numbers for the deleted accounts. You must explicitly request that they reactivate the accounts for legal reasons, but after you’ve responded to the email with the numbers and explicit request, you’re done! It takes a couple of business days, but your account(s) will be restored.
P.S. A cautionary word: do NOT keep the number so that you can just call my new best friend David and say hello. Apparently he’s a very busy man.
