There are quite a few ways of accessing GA4 data and it’s easy to get lost in the options. Use the tickboxes below to select the items which apply to your question and the results boxes at the bottom will filter down to the best options. There is no one way to access data that has everything so for some combinations all options will be greyed out. This is largely because the raw data that Google provides in BigQuery (ie. the most flexible and scalable way to query your data) intentionally does not include certain features for privacy reasons (demographic, cross-device and data-driven attribution data). In cases like that you will have to adjust the ticked items to get a result that at least comes close to answering your query.
Do I need my report to access more than 14 months of data?
Do I need my report to include demographics, interest or cross-device data collected by Google?
Do I need my report to include Google’s data-driven attribution models?
Do I need my report to include long-tail data (ie. large number of rows with small values in each row)?
Do I need my report to always be based on 100% of my GA4 data (and not sampled)?
Am I asking a complex question that involves multiple user touchpoints?
GA4 Standard Reports
Best for basic questions
GA4 Custom Explorations
Intermediate analysis (with 14 months of lookback)
GA4 API into Looker Studio, PowerBI etc
Structured reporting for basic and intermediate analysis
BigQuery into Looker Studio, PowerBI etc
Advanced analysis but without Google’s attribution, demographics and cross-device data.
