In this blog post, I want to summarize the new releases from the Google tools, that we use daily in datadice. Therefore I want to give an overview of the new features of BigQuery, Dataform, Looker Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Furthermore, I will focus on the releases that I consider to be the most important ones and I will also name some other changes that were made.
If you want to take a closer look, here you can find the Release Notes from BigQuery, Dataform, Looker Studio, Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager.
BigQuery
GA4 Data Transfer
BigQuery got a new Data Transfer.
In the GA4 Data Transfer are several kinds of data endpoints available. These are predefined and aggregated tables from the standard reports in GA4. These are the endpoints:
- Audiences
- Conversions
- Demographic details
- E-commerce purchases
- Events
- In-app purchases
- Landing page
- Pages and screens
- Promotions
- Tech details
- Traffic Acquisition
- User Acquisition
As in other data transfers, you can also set up a refresh window and backfill the data.
I still do not see the transfer as an option in BigQuery, it may take some time until it is available for every project and region.
Note: You can also set up a GA4-to-BigQuery link directly within GA4. This integration streams event data to BigQuery, where each row represents a single event. Keep in mind, however, that there's a daily limit of 1 million events.
Version Controlling
Version Controlling is directly available in BigQuery! Setting up a repository is the first starting point here:
After creation, there is the choice to keep it as an internal repository or to connect it with a third-party repository.
Then you can create workspaces (branches) to do your adjustments on the files and commit and push them to the main branch.
Further information about this can be found here.
Typeof function
A new and quite useful functionality!
The typeof function needs one parameter value and in the outcome it shows the data type of the parameter.
I can imagine that in more advanced IF or CASE WHEN statements, it might be useful to determine the data type of the incoming values and handle them accordingly.
GAds Data Transfer custom reports
You can transfer data directly from Google Ads to BigQuery. There are some problems with that data:
- You are limited by the possibilities of the Standard Reports
- You get a lot of different tables and views and it is hard to find the data you want
During the Transfer setup, you can create custom reports now:
There you have the possibility to define your own table names and query the different endpoints from Google Ads.
In the documentation can be found a Google Ads Query Builder to support you with building the raw data query. You can click on the resource you are interested in and select the fields you want and the query gets created in parallel.
BigQuery ML features
Naming the new features for BigQuery ML:
- two functions support metric visualization: ML.VALIDATE_DATA_SKEW and ML.VALIDATE_DATA_DRIFT
- You can use Anthropic Claude models in Vertex AI and as remote Models in BigQuery ML
Dataform
No further release for Dataform.
Looker Studio
Responsive report layout
Offering responsive dashboards was always a weakness for Looker Studio reports. Responsive means, it rearranges and scales the content of the page dynamically, based on the size of the screen.
Google added a new layout mode now. The old mode is called “Freeform” and the new one is “Responsive”.
You can not switch an existing “Freeform” dashboard to a “Responsive” dashboard. The official recommendation is, to create a new ”Responsive” dashboard and copy single elements from the old to the new dashboard.
I migrated one dashboard page to a responsive dashboard and after investigating for some minutes I achieved the following result:
The responsive layout comes with some restrictions:
- It offers clear spaces and arrangements you can not change
- Adding a line is not possible
- Arrange elements in the vertical middle of the space
- Getting an error when adding a second measurement in a bar chart (probably just a preliminary bug)
But when you change the dashboard size, it has the desired outcome:
Query results variable
This new feature gives you the ability to add dynamic values from the datasource directly in a text shown on the page.
When you add a text to the dashboard you need to enter @ and then create the needed variable by defining the dimensions and metrics and the sort. Then you can choose which row should be taken.
Then you can do e.g. the following:
Modern Charts Update
The modern charts mode is now the default for newly created reports and already existing dashboards can be upgraded to modern charts.
In this former blog post, I wrote already about this new mode.
Scheduled Email Changes
The functionality of sending emails with dashboard information has some limitations:
- The number of recipients per day and per month has a limit. For Looker Studio Pro, there is no restriction.
- Some functions are just available for Pro users from now on: Send a report immediately, customize the subject and message, show a preview of the report
Google Analytics
Value “(data not available)”
There can be a new entry in your report which shows (data not available). This one can show up in the acquisition part because then the medium traffic-source dimension is still in the processing. Should happen more for current-day data than for historical data and more on event-level reports.
Annotations
You can create annotations now directly in your reports. A title, a short description, a date (range), and a color can be chosen. Regardless of which report you created this annotation, it is shown in the time series graph of every detailed report.
When you click on an already existing annotation, you can change the annotations and do some further configurations.
New notifications
There can appear 2 new notifications when the corresponding conditions are met. Then it shows the reason for the issue and a link with further information on how to fix the problem.
- Missing session_start
- High not set rate
Google Tag Manager
Automatically load Google Tag
An update that led to a lot of confusion and when I read the news I also did not know what exactly it meant.
And to be honest, it is still a bit unclear.
The general purpose of this update is if you have Google Ads or Floodlight Tags but no Google Tag in your GTM Container, a Google Tag is auto-loaded and fired.
There are no automatic changes in the GTM (like a Google Tag gets auto-created in the container).
The general best approach is to create a Google Tag on your own in the GTM container, firing it on every page (before the other tags) and setting it up as you like.
First Party mode for Cloudflare
Setting up first-party mode for Cloudflare is already possible. Now it can be integrated with the Google Tag and GTM as well in combination with your Cloudflare Account.
How to set this up can be found here for the Google Tag and for the Google Tag Manager.
In this blog post, I already wrote briefly about setting up first-party mode for Cloudflare.
Further Links
This post is part of the Google Data Analytics series from datadice and explains to you every month the newest features in BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
Check out our LinkedIn account, to get insights into our daily working life and get important updates about BigQuery, Data Studio and marketing analytics.
We also started with our own YouTube channel. We talk about important DWH, BigQuery, Data Studio and many more topics. Check out the channel here.
If you want to learn more about how to use Google Data Studio and take it to the next level in combination with BigQuery, check our Udemy course here.
If you are looking for help to set up a modern and cost-efficient data warehouse or analytical dashboards, send us an email to hello@datadice.io and we will schedule a call.
