Google Analytics has released an extremely strange and confusing update: custom event data import. This feature allows you to use a combination of standard fields and custom parameters at the event level to merge and analyze imported event metadata with existing Analytics data.
Using this feature is quite simple:
1. You must be an Editor (or above) at the property level to import custom event data.
2. Set up event-scoped custom dimensions.
3. Upload the data (when creating the data source, select Custom event data as the data type).
4. In the "Key Fields" table, click "Add fields" to add the fields in Google Analytics that you want to join with the imported data.
5. In the Import fields table, click "Add fields" to select the fields you'd like to include in your data via the selected join key.
6. In both tables, select the matching fields from your import file in the Import field column.
7. After you upload your data, it can take up to 24 hours for Analytics to make that data available in reports, audiences, and explorations.
In Summary:
1. GA4 is increasingly becoming a some sort of Data Garden, accumulating as much data as possible within itself.
2. This approach (in my opinion) contradicts the most effective way to use GA4 right now – as an intermediary for collecting data in BigQuery.
3. The implementation seems extremely crude – I had to reread the documentation several times just to roughly understand what it was about.
What are your impressions? Is this necessary or not?
Check My GA4-BigQuery Cheat Sheet.
