CRO at Adobe Target: type of activities

But what if you could automatically discover patterns and create data groups—without manual rules, endless scripts, or leaving your BigQuery analysis environment?

That’s exactly what K-Means with BigQuery ML allows you to do.

What is K-Means and why should you care?

K-Means is a clustering algorithm—a technique for grouping similar items. Imagine you have a table with thousands of URLs, users, or products. Instead of going through each one manually, K-Means can automatically find groups with common patterns: pages with similar performance, campaigns with similar outcomes, or users with shared behaviors.

And the best part? With BigQuery ML, you can apply K-Means using plain SQL—no need for Python scripts or external tools.

How does it actually work?

The process behind K-Means is surprisingly simple:

1. You choose how many groups you want (the well-known “K”).

2. The algorithm picks initial points called centroids.

3. Each row in your data is assigned to the nearest centroid.

4. The centroids are recalculated using the assigned data.

5. This process repeats until the groups stabilize.

The result? Every row in your table is tagged with the cluster it belongs to. Now you can analyze the patterns of each group and make better-informed decisions.

How to apply it in BigQuery ML

BigQuery ML simplifies the entire process. With just a few lines of SQL, you can:

• Train a K-Means model on your data

• Retrieve the generated centroids

• Classify each row with its corresponding cluster

This opens up a wide range of possibilities to enrich your dashboards and marketing analysis:

• Group pages by performance (visits, conversions, revenue)

• Detect behaviors of returning, new, or inactive users

• Identify products often bought together or with similar buyer profiles

• Spot keywords with unusual performance

How many clusters do I need?

Choosing the right number of clusters (“K”) is critical. Here are a few strategies:

• Business knowledge: If you already know you have 3 customer types or 4 product categories, start there.

• Elbow Method: Run models with different K values and watch for the point where segmentation no longer improves significantly.

• Iterate thoughtfully: Test, review, and adjust based on how your data behaves.

Real-world examples

With K-Means in BigQuery, you can answer questions like:

• What types of users visit my site, and how do they differ?

• Which pages show similar performance trends?

• Which campaigns are generating outlier results?

Grouping data this way not only saves time—it reveals opportunities and issues that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Conclusion

If you're handling large data sets and need to identify patterns fast, clustering with K-Means and BigQuery ML can be a game-changer. You don’t need to be a data scientist or build complex solutions from scratch. You just need to understand your business and ask the right questions—BigQuery can handle the rest.

Start simple: take your top-performing pages, group them by sessions and conversions, and see what patterns emerge. You might uncover insights that completely shift how you approach your digital strategy.