One of the most important GA4 settings that most store owners never change is the data retention period. GA4 defaults to 2 months of event-level data retention, which means your Explore reports (custom explorations, funnel reports, path analysis) can only look back 2 months. For any seasonal business, this makes year-over-year comparison in Explore reports impossible. Changing it to 14 months fixes the problem.
What GA4 Data Retention Actually Controls
GA4 has two types of data with different retention rules:
Aggregated reporting data
The data you see in standard GA4 reports (Traffic Acquisition, Conversions, Engagement) is stored indefinitely as aggregated data. Standard reports always show historical data regardless of your retention setting. This data is never affected by the retention period you set.
Event-level data for Explore
The Explore section of GA4 (custom funnels, path analysis, segment overlap, free-form reports) uses raw event-level data. This is what the data retention setting controls. After the retention period, event-level data is deleted from GA4, and you cannot build Explore reports from it.
With 2-month retention: in November, you can only explore data from September onwards. You cannot compare November 2025 vs November 2024 funnel performance in Explore.
With 14-month retention: you always have over a year of event-level data available for Explore reports, enabling year-over-year comparison for any metric.
How to Change GA4 Data Retention to 14 Months
In GA4, go to Admin → Data Settings → Data Retention.
Change Event data retention from 2 months to 14 months.
Toggle on Reset user data on new activity. This resets the retention clock when a user returns to your site. Without this, a user who visited once 13 months ago has their data deleted the following month. With it enabled, the clock resets each time they visit, so active users’ data is retained continuously.
Click Save. The change takes effect going forward. Historical data already deleted cannot be recovered.
Does 14-Month Retention Cost More?
No. GA4 does not charge for standard data retention up to 14 months. The cost of GA4 is $0 for standard properties regardless of data retention setting (within Google Analytics 4 standard, not GA4 360). Changing from 2 months to 14 months is free.
What About BigQuery Export?
If you have enabled GA4 BigQuery export, your raw event data is stored in BigQuery indefinitely (until you delete it or set a BigQuery table expiration). BigQuery storage has its own pricing but is generally cheap for most Shopify stores’ data volumes.
BigQuery export is the long-term archiving solution — it keeps all historical raw data available regardless of GA4 retention settings. Even with 14-month retention in GA4, having BigQuery export enabled ensures you never permanently lose event-level data as long as BigQuery is active.
Other GA4 Data Settings to Review
User data retention
Separate from event data retention, this controls how long user-level identifiers (User ID, device ID) are retained. Set to match your event data retention (14 months).
Data deletion requests
GA4 provides a mechanism to delete specific user data on request, for GDPR compliance. This is separate from retention settings and applies on a per-user basis when you receive a data deletion request.
When to Review Your Retention Setting
Check this immediately if you have recently set up GA4 or have never reviewed it. Many stores that implemented GA4 during the UA-to-GA4 transition period still have the default 2-month setting and do not realise they have been losing data.
If your GA4 property is already 14+ months old and you have been on 2-month retention: you cannot recover the deleted data. Going forward, change to 14 months to preserve future data.
Get Your GA4 Settings Reviewed
Data retention is one of several GA4 settings that affect the quality and completeness of your analytics data. A full GA4 audit checks all these settings together to ensure you are not losing data or reporting inaccurately.
Book your free Shopify tracking audit here and we will review all your GA4 settings, including data retention, as part of the complete audit.