Lesson 3: How to Connect GA4 with BigQuery

Author

Anil Batra
November 03, 2023

How to Connect GA4 with BigQuery

In the previous post. I provided various reasons to send the GA4 data to BigQuery.

In this post, I will provide step-by-step instructions for connecting GA4 and BigQuery so that you can see your data in BigQuery.

Signup for BigQuery and Create a Project

  1. Go to Google Cloud Console (https://console.cloud.google.com/).

  2. Create a new Google Cloud Console project or select an existing project, if you already have one.

  3. Open the Navigation menu in the top-left corner (three horizontal lines).

  4. Scroll down and click on APIs & Services and then click Library.

  5. Search for BigQuery API in the search box on the top.

  6. Click on BigQuery API.

  7. On the next page, click Enable.

  8. Review and agree to the Terms of Service, if required.

Now your BigQuery project is ready for you to send the GA4 Data.

Connect GA4 and BigQuery

  1. Login to your GA4 property.

  2. Go to the Admin panel.

  3. Go to the "BigQuery Links" section and click on it.

  4. Click on "Link" to link to the BigQuery Project. 

  5. Pick the BigQuery Project that you want to send the data to (this is the one you created above).

  6. Next, pick the tables that you want to export. See the image below:

  7. You have three options:

    1. Daily (Event Data) - this sends the GA4 event data at the end of the day.

    2. Streaming (Event Data) - this sends the real-time streaming data to BigQuery. This option is only available if you enter your credit card and enable billing in BigQuery. Don’t worry, if you have a small to medium-sized site then you will likely never pay for BigQuery even if you enable billing. BigQuery provides 10 GB of data storage and I TB of query data processing for free every month.

    3. Daily (User Data) - this sends the user data (both unknown and known users) at the end of the day.

    I will cover the details of these various options and data schema in future lessons.

    I recommend that you enable all three options for maximum benefits. If you don’t want to enter a credit card then you will be limited to the “Daily” option only.

  8. Click, next, review and you are done.

Now your GA4 data will start to flow to BigQuery. It will take 24-48 hours for you to start seeing the data.

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