Introduction If you’ve used Google Analytics for your website, chances are you’re familiar with Universal Analytics (UA) — the long-standing version that most marketers and analysts grew up on. But now, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has taken center stage, and it’s not just a redesign — it’s a whole new way of thinking about analytics. … Read more
Introduction If you’ve started analyzing GA4 data in BigQuery, you’ve likely come across the field: It looks simple at first. However, in the context of Consent Mode, user stitching, and multi-touch attribution, its meaning and behavior deserve a deeper look. In this post, I’ll break down: Let’s get into it. What Is traffic_source.medium? In GA4 … Read more
Introduction In web and app analytics, sessions are the foundation of most user-level metrics. However, GA4 fundamentally redefines sessions compared to Universal Analytics (UA). Where UA relied heavily on time-based rules, cookies, and pageview hits, GA4 is event-driven, focusing on user engagement and cross-device tracking. Understanding GA4 sessions is critical to correctly interpreting metrics like Active Users, Engagement Rate, Conversions, and … Read more
Introduction Analyzing GA4 data in BigQuery can be incredibly powerful — but it’s easy to end up with slow, expensive queries as your logic grows. After writing complex GA4 SQL for things like session stitching and consent-aware attribution, I’ve learned some valuable techniques to keep things efficient, readable, and scalable. In this post, I’m sharing … Read more
In today’s multi-device world, users often start a journey on mobile, continue on desktop, and convert on a tablet. GA4 UI can deduplicate users but splits sessions across devices, making session counts and marketing attribution unreliable. This creates a major challenge for marketers: Which touchpoint truly drove the conversion? BigQuery provides the ability to reconstruct … Read more
Session counts in GA4 often don’t match what you see in BigQuery exports. This is because GA4 constructs sessions using rules like inactivity timeouts, traffic source changes, and midnight splits. For analysts and marketers, this can lead to confusion in attribution, engagement tracking, and conversion reporting. In this post, we’ll break down session stitching, provide … Read more
Marketers often ask the big question: “Which channel really drives conversions?”With GA4 and BigQuery, you can move beyond guesswork and analyze attribution models directly in your data warehouse. In this post, we’ll show how to implement last-click attribution using SQL and compare it with GA4’s data-driven attribution (DDA) tables. This helps you evaluate channels side … Read more
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has been evolving rapidly, but one hot topic in 2025 is data sampling. Many marketers and analysts are noticing that GA4 reports now apply sampling more aggressively than before, which can lead to inaccurate insights. This change is pushing professionals to rely more heavily on BigQuery for precise, unsampled data. In … Read more
Marketing teams constantly ask: “Which channel truly drives conversions?” GA4 provides user-level metrics and event data, but discrepancies between the GA4 interface and BigQuery exports can make attribution tricky. For example, Active Users or New Users may not match when you try to analyze traffic by campaign, source, or medium in BigQuery. This guide shows … Read more
If you’ve ever compared GA4 user metrics in the interface with BigQuery exports, you might have noticed discrepancies. For example, Active Users, New Users, or Total Users in the GA4 UI often don’t match what you calculate from the raw BigQuery data. Understanding why this happens is crucial for accurate reporting, marketing attribution, and data-driven … Read more
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