Recently a lot of Universal Analytics clients were scrambling to backup there old data. Some of them learned that they can't back up the entire historical data because of the data retention settings that had in place.
Nobody thought about those setting when Universal Analytics was running but all of a sudden the importance of those setting came into picture.
Now that everybody has migrated to GA4 or another solution like Piwik PRO, it is time to make sure that you don't run into the same issues with GA4 in the future.
In one of my live sessions, I covered three simple steps to get your GA4 data flowing to BigQuery and that's what I am going to show you in this post. If you would rather watch the video then skip down to the bottom of this page.
GA4 to BigQuery in 3 Simple Steps
- Create a BigQuery Account and Project in Google Cloud
- Enable GA4 to BigQuery Setting in GA4
- Enable BigQuery API in Google Clouds
Step 1: Create a BigQuery and Project In Google Cloud
Go to https://cloud.google.com/bigquery
Click on "Get Started for Free" or a big button on the page that let's your create your account.
Go through the steps and make sure to enter your credit card and signup for paid version. Don't worry you won't be charged right away and you might never be charged as BigQuery give you a lot of free data storage and query processing every month. If you are worried then reach out to us and we can help you setup some alters which will alter you if you are about to go over your free threshold.
When you create an account, your project will be automatically created. Project is where your GA4 dataset will be created.
Step 2: Enable GA4 + BigQuery integration
Go to Admin panel in GA4.
Go to "Product Links" section and click on "BigQuery links"
Follow the prompt and pick the project that you just created in the previous step.
Check all the boxes that you see. If you want to know what those boxes are for then see the video.
Go ahead and save.
Now you are ready to send the GA4 data to BigQuery.
Step 3: Enable BigQuery APIs.
In BigQuery click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, scroll down to API & Services and then select Library.
You can also go directly to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library
Search for BigQuery APIs and then click on enable button.
That's it. Now your GA4 data will start to flow to BigQuery. You will have to wait for 24 hours or so for the first day of the data.
GA4 to BigQuery in 3 Simple Steps Video
Learn GA4 and BigQuery
We can get you and your team trained on BigQuery. If interested then email us at support@optizent.com or fill the form below.
Alternatively, we can also help you setup everything and get it working for you.