Google Announced on March 16, 2022, that it will discontinue Universal Analytics (GA3) on July 1st, 2023.If you want to save your historical GA3 (Universal Analytics) data from being deleted, then take backup (import) of it in BigQuery.
Note: If you are looking to send GA4 data to BigQuery, then check out the following two articles:
#3 Create a new data set where you are going to store the GA3 data in BigQuery.
Follow the steps below:
Step-1: Click on the three dots menu next to your project ID (this ID could be different in your case):
Step-2:Click on ‘Create Dataset’:
You should now see an overlay on the right-hand side:
Step-3: Name your dataset (say UA_data_set)
Step-4: Select the data location nearest to you from the drop-down menu and then click on the ‘Create dataset’ button at the bottom:
You should now see a screen like the one below, which confirms that your new data set has been created:
We are going to use this new data set for storing data from GA3.
#4 Use a third-party solution (connector) for sending GA3 data to BigQuery.
You would now need to use a third-party solution for sending Google Analytics data to BigQuery. This is going to cost you based on your account usage.
Regardless of how much it costs you, it would most likely still be cheaper than paying $150k per year to Google for using the GA360 (which comes with the free connection to BigQuery).
You can either search for such third-party solutions online or use the one that I use which is ‘Supermetrics for BigQuery‘. They provide a free 14 days trial of their solution. No credit card required.
You should now see a screen like the one below, which is about creating a data transfer:
Step-9: Keep the data source (‘Google Analytics by Supermetrics‘) intact and move on to the next step:
Step-10: Type a meaningful name for the ‘Transfer config name‘ field:
Step-11: Keep the schedule options (which specify when the transfer will run) to ‘Daily’ and ‘Start now’ (unless you want to change it) and move on to the next step:
Note(1): The ‘Repeats’ setting to ‘Daily’ means to have new data added once a day.
Note(2): The ‘Start date and run time’ setting is locked for editing when ‘Start now’ setting is selected.
Step-12: Scroll down and then select the data set you created earlier from the drop-down menu:
We are going to use this data set for storing GA3 data in BigQuery.
Step-13: Click on the ‘CONNECT SOURCE‘ button:
Step-14: Click on the ‘Accept Agreement‘ button:
Step-15: Click on the ‘Authorize with Google Analytics‘ button:
Step-16: Click on the name of the Google account which is associated with both your Google Analytics account and BigQuery project:
Step-17: Click on the ‘Allow‘ button:
Step-18: Click on the ‘Continue‘ button:
You should now see a screen like the one below:
Step-19: Select the Google Analytics reporting view (from which you want to send data to BigQuery) from the ‘Accounts’ drop-down menu:
Step-20: Scroll down and then click on the ‘Submit‘ button:
You should now see the ‘Source Connected‘ message below ‘Third party connection‘:
Step-21: Scroll down and then click on the ‘SAVE‘ button to save the data transfer and also start the initial data transfer:
You should now see a screen like the one below:
Note: If you don’t see such ascreen, then refresh your browser window.
Through the ‘Run History‘ section, you can monitor the current progress of all of your data transfers.
When the data transfer is in progress, you see the message ‘The transfer run is in progress‘:
When the data transfer is complete, you see the message ‘The transfer run has completed successfully‘:
Step-22: Click on the ‘SQL WORKSPACE‘ link from the left-hand side navigation:
Step-23: Navigate to the data set named ‘UA_data_set‘ (which we created earlier):
This data set lists all the data tables automatically created by supermetrics:
Step-24: Click on the data tables one by one to see what data it contains.
For example, GA_CONTENT_ data table contains the GA3 content data:
Step-25: Click on the ‘PREVIEW‘ tab to preview the data table:
At this point, you can query a particular set of data by clicking on the ‘QUERY’ button:
That’s how you can send GA3 data to BigQuery without using Google Analytics 360.
Sending Google Analytics 4 data to BigQuery
Google Analytics 4 provides a free connection to BigQuery. So you don’t need to use a third-party solution for that.
This makes sending GA4 data to BigQuery a bit different.
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