Google Analytics and BigQuery, two tools that are both major players in their respective segments. Yet, there is no way to easily send raw hit-level data from one to another.
In this article, originally posted on medium.com, we’re going to walk through the reasons you might want to access raw Google Analytics data in BigQuery and a few solutions that will get you there.
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Google Analytics is, without a doubt, the most popular tool in the digital analytics segment. Besides being the best tool for tracking e-commerce, content and lead-gen websites, with some modification you can use Google Analytics for tracking SaaS and other web apps as well.
While being a really powerful and flexible tool, Google Analytics, too, has a few shortcomings. Perhaps the biggest problem every advanced user faces is the fact that there is no way to access raw hit-level data. The second major issue with Google Analytics is related to sampling and data collection limits.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can overcome these shortcomings without spending a ton on Google Analytics 360 — a premium version of Google Analytics that, to some extent, also eliminates these issues.
PS! If you already have GA 360, these techniques will give you an even more robust and flexible tracking solution.
Table of Contents
– Sampling in Google Analytics
– Ways to avoid sampling in Google Analytics
– Why do you even need the raw data
– How to get access to unsampled hit-level raw data
– What about the price
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