Google Analytics will drop IE9 support on January 31

Google today announced that its Analytics service will stop supporting Internet Explorer 9 next month. Starting on January 31, Google Analytics users should only use Microsoft’s browser if they are running IE10 or IE11.

While you can continue to use Google Analytics with IE9 after this date, Google warned that “some features may not work properly going forward.” In other words, if you haven’t upgraded yet, just pull the trigger.

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In September 2013, Google first announced that it plans to discontinue support for the third-oldest version of browsers in Google Analytics. IE8 support was then killed off in December of the same year.

This means the January 31 date only affects IE. Google says it will continue to support Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and “other modern browsers,” but since their version numbers change more frequently, and they don’t have as high of a market share, they don’t get their own deadline announcement.

If you’re still using an old version of any browser, you can expect problems when using Google Analytics. Well, that goes for the web in general, but Google Analytics can be particularly heavy on certain functions.

It’s important to emphasize that Google Analytics will still count and track visits from users of all browsers, including IE9. This change merely affects accessing the service, not what it actually measures.

IE9 is only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. The latest browser figures show it has about 9.14 percent market share.

That means it’s still the third-most used IE version. IE11 is first (a recent development) and IE8 is second, largely because Windows XP users can’t upgrade past it.

Similarly, Windows Vista users can’t upgrade past IE9. Of course, if you’re still using Vista, you need to upgrade a lot more than just your browser version. Whether you’re a Google Analytics user or not, it’s time to go get an upgrade.