Importing history
Bring a site’s history over from another tool, and its dashboard reaches back before fivebar first counted it.
Only a site’s owner can import its history, under Import in the site’s settings, from:
Plausible, from its export
Google Analytics, from a Google Analytics 4 property
Fathom, with an API token
Matomo, with an auth token
Simple Analytics, with an API key
Imported days are outlined on the chart, and its tooltips say where they came from. The API and apps connected over MCP read them as the dashboard does and say which they are, but can’t import or remove one.
What comes over
| What | Each imported day holds |
|---|---|
| Totals | Pageviews, visits and visitors, as the other tool counted them |
| Pages | Pageviews by page, on the site’s domain or its subdomains, and so the drilldown’s folders |
| Sources | Pageviews by source and referrer, and by utm_ tags, and so channels and campaigns |
| Countries | Pageviews by country |
| Devices | Pageviews by device, browser and operating system |
Each value is spelt as fivebar spells its own, so it falls in the same row of its pane: Plausible’s Google is fivebar’s Google, and a browser fivebar has no name for is Other. Each day keeps its 2,000 most viewed pages and its 100 most viewed values of each of the rest, so a pane’s full view over imported days lists those.
What doesn’t, and why
- Bounce rate and visit duration, which each tool measures its own way: mixed with fivebar’s, they would show a change at the switch that never happened.
- Visits and visitors by page, source or anything else, which mean something different in each tool. Only pageviews add up the same way everywhere.
- Entry and exit pages, which fivebar works out from the visits it counts.
- Cities: Plausible writes a city as a number from a database fivebar doesn’t use, and Google names cities otherwise than fivebar does.
- Hours: an imported day is a whole day, so the Hours section counts fivebar’s days, and a range of a day or two holding an imported day is charted by the day.
- Goals, events and custom properties: fivebar counts a goal from its own events and pages, and a goal’s conversions are visits.
- Networks, links, downloads, forms, calls, emails, site searches, errors, script errors, speed, engagement and bots, which fivebar measures its own way as it counts each page.
A pane or a figure that counts what imported days don’t hold counts fivebar’s days alone: a pane’s full view says so, as bounce rate’s and visit duration’s tooltips do.
Which days
An import takes only the days before fivebar first counted the site, so no day is counted twice; where nothing is counted yet, the days before today. Of those, it takes the longest unbroken run that no other import holds, so imports never share a day and the order they come in never shuts one out. An import says how many of its days it left out, if any. The same export or property imported again takes its next such run, and where none is left, an export adds any files its import lacks. A site imported again from Fathom, Matomo or Simple Analytics takes its next such run too.
The site’s start date moves back to the first day imported, so All time, the calendar, the API and apps reach it. Export after fivebar has started counting, so the history meets fivebar’s first day.
Visitors on imported days
An imported day’s visitors are the other tool’s count of that day, as its pageviews and visits are. They’re added up day by day, as fivebar’s are, so over a range they’re visitor-days too: see Metrics.
Filters
Imported days are read only with no filter. Each holds its pageviews by page, by source and the rest apart, never together, so it can’t say how many pageviews a page had from Google, say. Under any filter, a goal’s among them, the dashboard leaves them out, and a pane’s full view says so, as the API and apps do.
Billing
Imported days are never billed: their pageviews count towards neither your plan’s pageviews nor your trial’s 1M. A site can import while its account has no plan, and its imported days show once it has one.
Removing an import
Under Import in the site’s settings, press Remove beside an import, and confirm. Its days go from the dashboard at once, and the site’s start date is the day it was added again, or the first day of an import still there where that’s earlier. Only the site’s owner can. Removing an import from Google Analytics while it runs discards it: nothing it reads is kept. Deleting the site deletes its imported history with it.