A
argbe.tech - news
1min read

GA4 → BigQuery: The Raw-Data Pipeline SEOs Need for 2026 Attribution

Moz’s Whiteboard Friday argues that exporting GA4 to BigQuery unlocks raw, unsampled data that better fits modern SEO attribution. David Westby notes you can sidestep GA4 retention limits and sampling, with free BigQuery storage for properties around 30,000 monthly sessions.

In Moz’s Whiteboard Friday, analytics consultant David Westby frames GA4-to-BigQuery export as an SEO attribution upgrade: it can bypass GA4 retention limits and report sampling, and BigQuery storage is free for properties around 30,000 monthly sessions.

  • BigQuery gives access to GA4’s raw event data outside the standard GA4 interface, enabling more flexible analysis.
  • The export starts only after the GA4–BigQuery link is set up, so it won’t backfill historical data.
  • Linking is free, but it requires a Google Cloud account to connect GA4 with BigQuery.
  • Working with raw events helps avoid GA4 “(other)” cardinality grouping by handling high-unique dimensions in queries.
  • With raw data in BigQuery, teams can programmatically define their own sessions and user properties for custom attribution modeling.