GA4 data retention: why your old data vanished

If an Exploration suddenly shows nothing beyond a few months back, you have hit GA4's data retention limit. By default GA4 throws away the detailed, user-level data after a set period, and it defaults to the shorter one.

What retention actually controls

Retention applies to the granular, event and user-level data that powers Explorations and custom, unusual breakdowns. The setting is 2 months or 14 months, and new properties often default to 2. Anything older than your setting is deleted and cannot be recovered, which is why a long-range Exploration comes back empty.

What it does not affect

Your standard aggregated reports (the pre-built ones showing users, sessions and conversions over time) are not limited by this setting and keep showing long-range totals. So the homepage charts look fine while Explorations go blank, which is exactly what confuses people. This is separate from GA4's reporting lag and from data thresholding.

What to set, and the real fix

• In Admin, Data settings, Data retention, set event data retention to 14 months. There is no reason to leave it at 2.
• This is not retroactive: it protects data from now on, it cannot bring back what was already deleted.

If you need history beyond 14 months, the only real answer is exporting to BigQuery, where you keep raw data as long as you want, though those numbers will not always match the GA4 UI.

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