Google Analytics utc timezone

Question

I've read here and here that the GA timezone depends on the timezone set in the GA account. Does this mean that I can't get the UTC data for each day?

Answer 1

Setting your account to GMT/UK does not achieve this because for part of the year The UK observes daylight savings, taking it out of sync with UTC. Iceland works for now because it is UTC all year round.

This is a hack because a country's time zones and whether or not they observe daylight savings can change. Also note that if you set your location to Iceland for the timezone google will think your business is in Iceland and send you offers for advertising and things in Icelandic context!

What we need is for google to support UTC as a reporting time rather than only supporting places. You can enter your real location on your google analytics account and then set UTC (Iceland) as the reporting time for each property, again not perfect.

Answer 2

Something you can do is set the Time Zone country to United Kingdom and the Time Zone itself to GMT+00:00 GMT (no daylight saving).

It's a bit of a hack, but GMT and UTC are considered interchangeable. UTC replaced GMT, so although GMT is no longer officially maintained by the scientific community, it's still basically the same thing.

From the left-hand menu, go to Admin > View > View Settings.

Answer 3

You answered your own question.

Google Analytics dates and times are in the time zone of the Google Analytics account. The website displays in that time zone and the Google Analytics API returns data in that time zone.

You have tagged your question both Google Analytics and Google Analytics API. If you are using the API and want it in UTC you will have to convert it after you have extracted the data. If you are using the website there is nothing you can do. (Besides removing API tag from your question)