User ID not showing up in BigQuery

Question

What can be the reason the user_id is null in BigQuery? Data from Analytics is sent to BigQuery but the user_id is not passed along. T

Answer 1

I am operating under the assumption that this field is intentionally held out from all Google Analytics -> BigQuery extracts based on the following:

• https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6205850?hl=en#limits
  • Of particular note, the line "The User ID value can not be queried as a dimension in reports in either the web interface or the APIs". I take this to mean that it will never leave the confines of Google Analytics, including to BigQuery.
• I have not been able to get anything but null in my tables either.

Sorry I do not have better news for you!

Answer 2

Confirmed by Google Analytics 360 support, the userId only have non-null values in BigQuery tables that are exported from User-ID enabled views in Google Analytics. For non-User-ID views, you only see null values for the userIdcolumn and you have to use a custom dimension to capture User Ids and query them in BigQuery.

In order to check which Google Analytics view you have linked to BigQuery, you can either look at the dataset ID in BigQuery (which is the same as the Analytics View ID) or directly the linked Google Analytics view in Admin > All Products [Property column] > BigQuery in the Google Analytics UI.