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BigQuery Data Transfer Service

BigQuery Data Transfer Service is a Google service that copies Google Ads and Merchant Center data into BigQuery on a schedule, so the store keeps its own copy.

How it works

You set up a transfer: the source, the BigQuery dataset it fills and the schedule. Data lands in tables partitioned by date. Rerunning a date overwrites that day, without duplicates.

The Google Ads connector takes a customer ID or manager account and runs at most once every 24 hours. It loads a standard set of reports from the Google Ads API, optional Performance Max tables, or custom queries in GAQL. Each run reloads the most recent days, called the refresh window: 7 by default, up to 30. A backfill of past dates reaches as far back as Google Ads keeps data.

The Merchant Center connector is in Preview. It loads products and their issues, inventories, performance, best sellers, price competitiveness and price insights, as often as every 6 hours. Backfill differs by report: 14 days for products and their issues, 2 years for performance and best sellers, none for price competitiveness and price insights.

Both transfers run free of charge; BigQuery storage and queries are billed as usual. Automating Google Ads and Merchant Center exports covers when a store needs this and when scheduled reports are enough.

Where you see it

In the Google Cloud console, on the BigQuery Data transfers page.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop starts a Merchant Center transfer on 20 March. Performance data goes back 2 years, but products and their issues only 14 days, to 6 March. The transfer can’t show which products were disapproved in February.

Not to be confused with

  • Looker Studio — builds reports on top of a source and, unless the data is extracted, keeps only a temporary cache. The transfer stores the data itself.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “We’ll switch the transfer on when we need the history.” Right: products and their issues come back only 14 days, price competitiveness not at all. That history starts on the day the transfer does.
  • Wrong: “Yesterday’s numbers in BigQuery are final.” Right: each Google Ads run reloads and overwrites the refresh window, 7 days by default.

Sources