Omission of Google Analytics tracking code on tracked site - how, if possible, can the data be recovered?

Question

A coworker in my department recently discovered that when one of our sites was updated last year, the Google Analytics tracking code was not included in the site, which was built in asp.net MVC. I'm not an analytics expert by any means, so I've been looking around online most of the day, and all I'm finding is answers to questions somewhat similar, but not quite the same, effectively stating that you can't retroactively track a site...but saying nothing about this particular case.

I have yet to find a definitive answer as to whether or not a site that was being tracked, had the code removed, and then added again, can have the intermittent period of data recovered, and if so, how. The logs exist and I have access to them, as well as access to all of the source code and the analytics account.

Answer 1

Server logs typically have a max size limit so even with the logs you may not recover all the data.

If you have an analytics package installed on the server to read the logs, you may be able read the data in the logs by pointing the settings of the server-based analytics program to the new site log location.

As far as Google Analytics goes, if it was not tracking, you have no data in there for the missing time period. Once the Google Analytics code was removed, it stopped tracking. Google Analytics does not import server log data.