In the realm of digital analytics, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) stands out as the de facto tool for website and marketing analysis. One of its most touted features is the ability to export data to BigQuery, Google's cloud-based data warehouse, enabling advanced analysis and customization. However, despite its robust capabilities, GA4's BigQuery export functionality has a notable limitation: it does not support backfills.
Backfilling refers to the process of retroactively populating data into a system, typically to fill gaps or update historical records. In the context of GA4's BigQuery export, backfilling would allow users who did not establish the connection at the time the GA 4 property was configured to add all of the missing days of data.
As of now, Google has not provided a timeline for backfilling support in GA4's BigQuery export. However, Google Analytics does offer an API that can be used to extract the historical data. While the API does allow you to query most of the dimensions and metrics included in the native BQ export, it does not allow for more than 9 dimensions and 10 metrics in a single query which can be limiting depending on your needs.
If you're looking for a fast and easy solution to access your GA 4 historic data through the API and load it into your Google BigQuery, give Launchpad a test drive. Launchpad makes the process of connecting the GA 4 API to BigQuery seamless and there is no need to involve engineers as it's a zero code data transfer application. Our help documentation includes our top schema recommendations for GA 4 and they can be imported directly into your job configuration sparing you the time and effort associated with selecting valid dimension and metric combinations.
Follow These Steps To Get Started with Launchpad ~
- Contact us for your free trial
- Connect Launchpad to your Google Analytics 4 account
- Select a schema yourself or import one from our help documentation
- Choose your desired dates to backfill
- Run your transfer
Launchpad is our powerful and easy to use one stop shop to transfer data from an array of domains to destinations of your choice. It helps customers easily access their data and transfer it to their preferred data warehouse where it can then be transformed, analyzed and visualized.
