Google Looker Studio: The Ultimate Guide in 2023 [+17 Expert Tips]

Google Data Studio is now Google Looker Studio, and it’s making data reporting much more accessible, visual, and impactful than before. The brand new interface, features, and functionality have some serious benefits on the subject of visualizing competitive data insights.

On this guide, we’ll introduce among the coolest, newest features of the platform to get you ramped up quickly. We’ll also walk you thru probably the most notable changes between Google Data Studio and Google Looker Studio.

Pro Tip: Even with the main overhaul, Google Looker Studio remains to be entirely free and accessible to all (even in case you don’t have any data of your individual!)— which means you may follow together with this tutorial in real-time.

With Looker Studio, you may create custom dashboards, reports, and visualizations to achieve insights into your enterprise operations. The platform offers a wide selection of knowledge connectors and report templates, allowing you to interpret data from various sources.

1. Log into Looker Studio

To log in to Looker Studio, you’ll need a Google account — I like to recommend using the identical one as your Analytics, Search Console, and/or Google Ads account.

After logging in, you’ll land on a page displaying your most up-to-date Looker Studio reports.

2. Explore the Looker Studio Dashboard

For those who’ve used Google Docs, Sheets, or Drive before, this dashboard should look pretty familiar. In the middle, you will have the choice to start out a blank report, start a tutorial, or see report templates. To the left, you will see a column that houses several tabs including Reports, Shared with me, Owned by me, Trash, and Templates. At the highest, you will see three more tabs: Reports, Data sources and explorer.

Let’s go over each of those tabs intimately.

Reports

Here’s where you may access all your reports (corresponding to a workbook in Tableau or Excel).

To create a report in Google Looker Studio:

• Click the Create button.
• Select Report.
• Add an information source.
• Customize your report.

Once you have created your report, you may access it later in your dashboard. To soft through several reports, filter them by name, owner, or last opened date through the use of the dropdown filters.

Data Sources

Data sources list all of the connections you’ve created between Looker Studio and your original data sources.

To create an information source in Google Looker Studio:

• Click the Create button.
• Select Data source.
• Enter in your organization information, click Proceed.
• Arrange email preferences.
• Select a Google Connector.
• Authorize the Google Connector using a Google Account.
• Select the account and property you need to view.
• Click Create Report.

Pro Tip: For those who’re using Google Analytics and/or Search Console (which I highly recommend), you’ll must individually connect each view and property, respectively. So if you will have three GA views for 3 different subdomains, you’ll need to establish three separate data sources.

Looker Studio currently supports 760+ data sources. Below are the most well-liked sources:

Explorer

Explorer is an experimental tool that permits you to experiment or tweak a chart without modifying your report itself.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a table in Looker Studio that shows the highest landing pages by conversion rate. While taking a look at this table, you’re thinking that, “Huh, I ponder what I’d find if I added average page load time.”

You don’t wish to edit the chart within the report, so that you export it into Explorer — where you may tweak it to your heart’s content. For those who determine the brand new chart is worthwhile, it’s easy to export it back into the report.

Template Gallery

The template gallery is a group of templates and examples you need to use depending on your enterprise needs.

For example, in case you run an ecommerce store, the ecommerce revenue template could be very useful.

Google Looker Studio Tutorial

Connect Data Sources to Google Looker Studio

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can connect data sources to Google Looker Studio.

1. Create an information source.

Click “Create” and select “Data source”.

2. Use Google Analytics.

The method is almost similar for other sources.

If you need to follow along exactly with what I’m doing, connect the Google Analytics Demo Account for the Google Merchandise Store.

3. Authorize the connection and choose an account.

Next, you’ll be prompted to authorize the connection. When you’ve done that, you’ll need to pick an account, property, and look at.

You’ll be presented with something just like the view below: an inventory of each field in your Analytics account (each the usual ones and those you’ve added).

Does this feel overwhelming? Yep, same here.

We could do lots on this step — add recent fields, duplicate existing ones, turn them off, change field values, etc. But, after all, we could also do all those things within the report itself, and it’s much easier there. So let’s try this.

Create a Report in Google Looker Studio

1. Click “Create Report” within the upper right.

Looker Studio will ask if you need to add a recent data source to the report; yes, you do.

Here’s what you’ll see. It’s pretty bare, but not for long!

2. Click “Add a chart” within the toolbar.

It’s time so as to add your very first chart. The excellent news is that data Studio makes it easy to match chart types with some handy illustrations.

3. Select the primary option under “Time series.”

For the aim of this tutorial, we’ll start with a “Time series” chart. This chart type shows change over time.

Once it appears in your report, the right-hand pane will change. Here’s what it’s best to see:

By default, the dimension is “Date”; you may change this to any of the time-based dimensions, including “12 months,” “Hour,” etc.

I’ll persist with “Date” since the Demo Account doesn’t have loads of historical data.

Looker Studio will routinely select a metric (i.e., what’s displayed on the Y-axis) for you. Be happy to alter this; for example, it defaulted to “Pageviews” for me, but I’d moderately see “Revenue per user.”

4. Add one other metric.

First, make certain you’ve chosen the chart, so that you see the pane:

You’ve gotten two options for adding a metric (or dimension).

You may click the blue plus-sign icon — which can bring up a search box so you will discover the sphere you would like — or you may drag a field from the fitting into the metric section.

To delete a metric, simply hover over it together with your mouse and click on the white “x” that appears.

5. So as to add a table, select the third option under “Add a chart.”

My chart defaults to Medium (for dimension) and Pageviews (for metric), so I modify it to Product and Unique Purchases.

And I believe this table’s formatting could use some work.

Change the “Rows per page” from 100 to twenty (much easier to read) and check the box for adding a Summary row.

6. Finally, click “Style” to go to the style tab.

Scroll down and choose “Add border shadow.” That is one among my favorite ways to make an information visualization pop off the page.

7. To see the finished product, click “View” in the highest corner.

This transitions you from Editor to Viewer mode.

Voila!

8. Click “Edit” to wind up and name the report.

Double-click the title (without delay, it’s “Untitled Report”) to alter it.

And with that, your first Google Looker Studio report is complete. Click that familiar icon above the Chart Editor and add some email addresses to share your report.

Okay, don’t share the report just yet—I’m about to disclose the secrets that’ll aid you seriously upgrade it.

Beginner Google Looker Studio Suggestions

1. Use templates.

There’s no must reinvent the wheel. For those who’re unsure where to start out with Looker Studio, I like to recommend browsing through their templates for inspiration.

Concentrate to the report’s creator. Many templates were built by the Looker Studio team; you will discover all of them within the “Marketing Templates” section. But there are also 45+ user submissions positioned within the “Community” section. A number of of my favorite templates:

• GA Behavior Overview: This dashboard pulls out probably the most relevant information from the Behavior section of Google Analytics
• Paid Channels Mix Report: Use this template to grasp how your ads are acting on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, search, and more.
• Website Technical Performance Indicators: Get a fast overview of how your site is performing in real-time, including JavaScript and 404 errors and page load times.

There are also a bunch of fun, non-marketing templates within the gallery (present in the “Featured” section), like F1: How Important Is the First Race? and Star Wars: Data from a galaxy far, far away. Definitely have a look in case you’re curious to see the total potential of GSD unleashed.

2. Publish your report.

Want to point out off your superior analytics and data visualization skills to the world? Submit your report back to this gallery using this Google form.

Read over the full instructions at this link, but here’s what I’d take into accout:

• Don’t share sensitive information. I like to recommend making a report with publicly accessible data, so there’s absolutely no probability you get in trouble for sharing data you don’t own. (Pro tip: recreate one among your existing company reports with dummy data from one among Google’s sample data sets!)
• Make it awesome. The general public reports are impressive, so don’t hold back with design, features, and so forth.
• Add context. Provide on-page explanations of what you’re measuring or monitoring with captions, instructions, perhaps even a video of you walking through the report.

3. Hook up with 760+ data sources.

As I discussed, you may bring data from Google-owned sources into Looker Studio, including Search Console, Google Ads, YouTube, and Campaign Manager.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are also greater than 120 partner connectors — essentially, third-party bridges between Looker Studio and platforms like Adobe Analytics, AdRoll, Asana, Amazon Ads, and AdStage (and that’s just the As).

Take a look at all the options here.

4. Create your individual report theme.

Whether your report is supposed for internal stakeholders, just like the leadership team, or external ones, like clients, it’ll be simpler if it looks good.

To regulate the report’s style and formatting, click the Layout and theme option within the toolbar.

Any changes here will apply across the report—meaning you simply need to choose fonts, colours, etc., once versus each time, you add a recent module to the report.

Looker Studio comes with two built-in themes: easy and easy dark. Nevertheless it’s easy to create your individual — and the outcomes are far more impressive.

Click on “Customize.”

Use your brand style guide to decide on primary and secondary colours, fonts, and text color. You may must get creative here; HubSpot uses Avenir Next, which Looker Studio doesn’t offer, so I went with its cousin Raleway.

For those who’re making a report for a client and don’t know their hex codes, Seer Interactive’s Michelle Noonan has an excellent tip: use a free color picker tool to discover what they’re using on their website.

You may also create a custom chart palette on this tab and edit the border and background settings.

5. Embed external content.

Similar to you may bring your report back to the broader world, it’s also possible to bring the broader world to your report.

You may insert Google Docs, Google Sheets, YouTube videos, and even live webpages with the URL embed feature. Embedded content is interactive, so it’s way more powerful than a screenshot.

Click “URL embed.” within the navigation bar so as to add content.

From there, simply paste the URL. Next, you could must resize the box that appears to suit your content’s entire length and width.

The choices listed here are pretty countless. One among my favorite ways to make use of this feature is to embed a Google Form gauging how helpful the report was for my audience:

If a piece of the report needs extra context (or my viewers aren’t that technical), I’ll add a brief video explaining what they’re taking a look at and how you can interpret the outcomes.

To personalize a report for a client, I’ll add the URL of their website, blog, and/or whatever pages they hired me to create or improve.

And for the HubSpot blogging team, I’ll add the newest version of the Search Insights Report so that they can compare our progress to the outcomes.

6. Send scheduled reports.

If you will have a gaggle of stakeholders that must see your report repeatedly, think about using Looker Studio’s “scheduled report” feature.

Click on the drop-down menu beside the “Share” button and choose “Schedule email delivery.”

First, enter your recipients’ email addresses, then select a schedule, whether each day, every Monday, or every month.

This is especially handy when working with customers, since you could not want to provide them access to the live report.

7. Download the report as a PDF.

Alternatively, you may download your report as a PDF. This is useful for one-off situations, like in case your boss asks for a standing report or your client desires to understand how an ad has performed up to now this month.

To download the file, click “download” on the drop-down menu.

Looker Studio gives the choice of downloading your current page or all the report. You may even add a link back to the report so your audience can dig in deeper in the event that they’d like and add password protection to make sure your data stays protected.

Intermediate Google Looker Studio Suggestions

7. Add a date range.

Give your viewers more freedom by letting them select which dates they’d prefer to see information for.

For instance, my reports all the time default to the last 30 days, but when one among HubSpot’s blog editors desires to see how their property performed within the previous calendar month, the date range controls allow them to adjust the report.

They will select from predefined options, like “yesterday,” “last seven days,” “12 months up to now,” etc., or pick a custom period.

To enable this, first navigate to the page you need to give users date control. Next, click on the drop-down menu by “Add a control.” Next, click “Date range” from the toolbar.

A box will appear in your report. Drag it into the position you would like — I like to recommend somewhere within the upper right or left corner, so your audience sees it first — and adjust the dimensions if mandatory.

Clicking this module will bring up a panel on top of your report called Date Range Properties. Set the default date range to “Auto date range,” if it isn’t already.

In case your viewers select a date range using the date range widget, every report on the page will routinely update to that period.

There are two ways to override this:

• Set a time period inside a particular chart. That point period will all the time supersede the date range control.
• Group the charts you need to be affected by the date range control with the module. Select the chart(s) and the box, then select Arrange > Group.

Now, only the chart(s) on this group will update when someone adjusts the date range.

Be sure this setting is obvious to your viewers — otherwise, they’ll probably assume all of the charts they’re taking a look at on their current page are using the identical time period.

8. Create interactive chart filters.

Need to make it even easier in your audience to filter the charts in your report? Create responsive chart filters.

This sounds fancy, however it simply means choosing a dimension in a chart will filter all of the charts on that page for that dimension.

For example, in case you click on “organic” on this chart, the opposite charts on the page will update to point out data for organic traffic only — identical to you’d applied a conventional filter control.

You may also create chart controls for time, line, and area charts. For instance, if a user highlights say, January through March on a time chart, the opposite charts on the page will show data for January through March as well — identical to date range control.

And likewise, identical to filter controls, you may group chart controls.

To enable chart control, select the suitable chart. Within the right-hand panel, scroll to the underside and check the box labeled “Apply filter.”

Add a caption next to charts that support interactive filtering, so your viewers understand it’s an option:

9. Add an information control.

Data controls may be one among the best Looker Studio features, full-stop. Place one among these bad boys in your report, and also you’ll give viewers the power to decide on the source of the information being piped into your charts.

It is a game-changer for anyone managing a posh property or working with multiple stakeholders.

For example, imagine you’re the admin of HubSpot’s Google Analytics account. You create a Looker Studio report monitoring key website performance indicators, like average page speed, variety of non-200 response codes, variety of redirect chains, and so forth.

You share this report with the blogging team, who has access to the Google Analytics view for blog.hubspot.com. (Need a refresher on how views and permissions work? Take a look at our ultimate guide to Google Analytics.)

You furthermore mght share the report with the Academy team, who has access to the GA view for academy.hubspot.com, and the Leads Optimization team, who has access to offers.hubspot.com.

To see this report populated with the relevant data, these teams simply need to pick their view from the “data source” drop-down, and voila — all of the charts will update routinely.

Pretty nifty, right?

Not only does this prevent from rebuilding the identical report for various groups, however it also means you don’t must worry about by chance sharing sensitive or confidential information. Each viewer can only select data sources they’ve been granted access to.

You may include multiple data controls in a single report.

Add the information control widget to your report by clicking this icon:

Then select which primary source you’d like viewers to tug from:

10. Add a dimension breakdown.

As a substitute of telling you what a dimension breakdown is, it’s easier to point out you the way it really works.

Suppose we would like to see users by source. To seek out out, we create an easy bar chart.

That is interesting — yet there’s some context missing. For instance, is all of that organic traffic coming from Google? (Since that is U.S. data, probably, but imagine creating the identical chart for China or Japan, where Baidu and Yahoo have a far greater presence.)

What about referral traffic? Clearly, we’re getting a big variety of users from referral links; is a single source driving most of them, or is it distributed fairly equally across a wide selection of sources?

We could create separate bar charts for every source — first filtering by medium after which making the dimension “Source” and the metric “Users.”

Or we could click a single button and have Looker Studio do it for us.

Under Breakdown Dimension, click “Add dimension.”

Add “Source.”

Here’s what it’s best to see:

Pretty sure my former Data Analytics professor would cry if he saw this. But don’t worry, we’re not done yet.

Hop over to the “Style” tab and check the box “Stacked bars” to show your regular bar chart right into a stacked bar chart (it’s best to see the chart type update accordingly).

Looker Studio will routinely make your bar charts “100% stacking,” meaning that each bar will go to the highest of the chart. Nevertheless, this style is misleading — for instance, here, it suggests every medium drove the identical variety of users.

Uncheck this box.

Now test it out:

11. Use Looker Studio Explorer.

To bring any chart into Explorer, mouse over the space next to its top-right corner. You’ll see three vertically-stacked dots appear; click them.

Select “Explore.”

You’ll see something like this:

You may toggle between different visualizations; add and take away dimensions and metrics; change the date range, and apply segments.

Note: Unlike every other Google tool on the market, Explorer doesn’t routinely save your work.

To preserve your chart, click the “Save” button on the highest nav bar (to the left of your profile icon). When you try this, your Explorer “report” shall be saved within the Explorer section of your dashboard. As well as, every change you make shall be saved by default.

Speaking of that dashboard, in case you prefer, it’s also possible to start with Explorer (moderately than a Looker Studio report). Go to your Looker Studio dashboard and choose “Explorer” in the highest menu.

Create a recent Explorer view by clicking the “Create” button on the left side..

At first, Explorer confused me. It feels very just like the core Looker Studio — what was the purpose of getting each?

Nevertheless, after spending a while in Explorer, I’ve come to understand its unique value.

Unlike Looker Studio, any modifications you make to a chart in Explorer are temporary. Meaning it’s a fantastic place to dig into your data and take a look at out alternative ways of visualizing it without making any everlasting changes. Then, when you’re blissful together with your chart, simply export it back into Looker Studio.

To do that, click the small sharing icon in the highest navigation bar.

Then select whether so as to add your Explorer work on a recent or existing Looker Studio report.

Advanced Google Looker Studio Suggestions

12. Create report-level filters.

By default, a filter applies to each chart on that page. But what if the viewer goes to the following page? The filter won’t go together with them.

That is confusing for non-technical folks and inconvenient for data-savvy ones. To bring a filter up from page-level to report-level, simply right-click on it and choose “Make report-level.”

13. Create blended fields.

Looker Studio is powerful because you may herald 760+ sources of knowledge right into a single report. But, because of a recent feature, blended sources, it just got even mightier.

Heads up: this can get somewhat technical. Stick with me, and I promise it’ll be value it.

For those who’re acquainted with JOIN clauses in SQL, you’ll understand data mixing instantly. No idea what SQL is? Not an issue.

The most effective technique to take into consideration mixing data is with a Venn Diagram. You’ve gotten two data sets. Each data set has unique information — e.g., resembling the information living within the green and blue areas.

But they’ve (not less than) one data point in common: the data within the blue-green overlap section.

This shared data point is generally known as a key. In case your data sets do not need a key, they’re not blendable.

For instance, suppose you need to compare how users behave in your website versus your app. The bottom line is the user ID, a custom dimension you’ve created in Google Analytics that your app analytics software also uses. (Note: The important thing doesn’t must have the identical name in each data sources; it just must have similar values.)

You mix your website behavior report from GA together with your app usage report. This provides you all of the records from the primary report together with any matching ones from the second; in other words, if a user has visited the positioning and used the app, they’ll be included.

Nevertheless, in the event that they only used the app but didn’t visit the positioning, they may not be included in the brand new blended data.

That is generally known as a LEFT OUTER JOIN. (To learn more, take a look at this W3Schools primer.) Why do you care? Since the order of your data sources matters.

Put your primary data source first — e.g., the one where you would like all of the values, no matter whether there’s a match in your second source.

Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the best way, let’s arrange a blended field.

First, add a chart to your report, then click on “Mix Data.”

This panel will pop up:

Select your first data source on the left. Remember, that is the first data source. Then add your second data source. Looker Studio permits you to add as much as five data sources in a chart, but let’s persist with two for now.

Now pick your join key(s). If the sphere exists in each sources, it’s going to turn green. If it doesn’t exist, you’ll see this:

Keep in mind that the important thing acts as a filter for the second data source. So in this instance, only records that match the landing page from the GA view for hubspot.com shall be pulled from Google Search Console.

Selecting multiple keys will further limit the variety of records pulled from the second data source.

When you’ve picked your join key(s), pick the size and metrics you need to see in your first data source. Then do the identical in your second.

You may also limit the outcomes by adding a filter or date range (or for GA sources, segments). Filters, date ranges, and segments applied to the left-most data source will carry over to the opposite data sources.

When you’ve finished customizing the report, click “Save.” Congrats: you simply created your first blended data chart!

For those who find it easier to create two separate charts after which mix them, Looker Studio offers a fantastic shortcut.

Just select each charts, right-click, and select “Mix data.”

Unfortunately, Looker Studio can get confused pretty quickly, so I’d still make an effort to learn how you can mix data using the right-hand pane.

14. Mix your data source with itself.

Do this workaround in case you’re bumping into limitations together with your data source connectors: mix an information source with itself.

To present you an idea, the GA data connector only permits you to add one “energetic user” metric to a chart, so there’s no technique to see 1 Day Lively Users, 7 Day Lively Users, and 28 Day Lively Users on the identical chart… unless you mix your Google Analytics data source with itself.

Follow the identical instructions as above, but as a substitute of picking a recent source in your second data source, just select the primary one again.

And since the entire fields are similar, you may pick whichever join key you’d like.

This selection can also be perfect when comparing trends across two-plus subdomains or segments.

For example, I wanted to take a look at organic users for the HubSpot Blog (blog.hubspot.com) and first site (www.hubspot.com) at the identical time.

This helps me work out if we’re growing search traffic across the board. It’s also helpful when traffic decreases — have rankings dropped site-wide, or simply for the blog (or the positioning)?

Nevertheless, you may’t add two separate “user” metrics to a chart without delay… unless, after all, you’re mixing data.

Create a recent blended data source (following the identical process as above) to set this up.

Add your first view to the left-most column, your second view to the next column, and so forth.

Note: Be sure you’re selecting views with mutually exclusive data. In other words, I wouldn’t wish to use “blog.hubspot.com” as my first source and “blog.hubspot.com/marketing” as my second source because all the information for the blog.hubspot.com/marketing view is included within the blog.hubspot.com one.

Due to that overlap, we wouldn’t find a way to identify trends clearly.

Use “Date” because the join key.

I added the organic traffic segment to each sources, but you may select whichever segment you’re enthusiastic about (paid traffic, social traffic, etc.) Or leave it off entirely! Tons of possibilities here.

In actual fact, listed here are some additional ideas for mixing a source with itself:

• Compare two-plus custom segments
• Compare two-plus landing pages
• Compare two-plus goal completions

15. Create a basic calculated field.

When your existing data doesn’t give you adequate information, it’s time to create a calculated field.

Calculated fields take your data and, as their name suggests, and make calculations.

It’s probably easiest to elucidate with an example.

Let’s say you need to take a look at the common variety of transactions per user. You may create a calculated field that takes the metric “Transactions” and divides it by the metric “Users.”

Once this field has been created, it’ll be updated routinely — so you may change the chart’s time range, dimensions, etc., and the common transactions per user data will update accordingly.

There are two ways to create a calculated field.

Create a data-source calculated field

This selection makes the sphere available in any report that uses that data source.

It’ll even be available as a filter control or in recent calculated fields (like calculated field inception).

Obviously, that is an excellent option in case you plan on using this tradition metric greater than once. The one caveat — you could have edit rights to the unique data source. You furthermore mght can’t use an information source calculated field with blended data.

To create a data-source calculated field, add a chart to your Looker Studio dashboard, then select the information source you need to derive your recent field from.

Click “Add a recent field” within the lower left-hand corner.

(You may also do that by clicking the pencil next to the information source after which choosing “Add a field” within the upper right corner of your field menu.)

Use the left menu to go looking for the metrics you would like; click one so as to add it to the formula.

If the formula has an error, a notification will appear in red underneath the editor explaining where you went flawed.

In case your formula works, you’ll get a green checkmark.

Click “Save” so as to add your recent field to the information source.

And don’t forget to call yours — which I forgot to do. 🙂

Now you may add this calculated field to any chart identical to a daily field.

Create a chart-level calculated field

For this selection, you’ll only find a way to make use of the sphere for that specific report.

This selection is somewhat easier because all the restrictions of the opposite type are reversed.

While you may’t use a chart-level calculated field in one other chart, filter control, or additional calculated field, you don’t need edit rights to the unique data.

You may also use a chart-specific calculated field for data mixing, which we’ll cover in the following step.

To create a chart-level calculated field, simply click “Add a field” underneath the prevailing dimension(s) and metric(s) you’ve chosen.

Once you select so as to add a recent field, this pane will pop up:

From here, enter the formula in your recent field — simply typing within the name of your required metric will trigger a menu of options — and click on “Apply.”

Your recent field shall be added to the chart.

Loves Data’s Benjamin Mangold has a superb round-up of sample calculated metrics, including:

• Average goal completions per user
• Non-bounce rate
• Pageviews per transaction
• Value per session

You may test it out for inspiration.

For those who want somewhat practice before you begin going to town on your individual data, Google offers a handy sample exercise.

16. Create a complicated calculated field.

Okay, so there’s lots you may do with easy algebraic calculated fields. But there’s much more you may do when you introduce functions and .

Don’t be scared off! We’ll walk through these step-by-step.

For those who’re comfortable with Google Sheets and/or Excel functions, you already know how you can use functions in Looker Studio.

For example, let’s say that you just majored in English, and it’s all the time bothered you that “Source” in Google Analytics is lower-case.

You need to use the UPPER function to remodel Source into all upper-case.

Simply click “Add dimension” > “Create recent field.”

Then enter the UPPER formula:

As Google Sheets expert Ben Collins points out, this trick will even standardize any custom naming; for instance, if some people in your team used “chat” for a campaign, and others used “Chat,” the UPPER function will aggregate each together.

Perhaps you need to create a recent field for city and country.

Just click “Add dimension” (since city and state are categorical, not quantitative, variables) > “Create field.”

Then use the CONCATENATE function to smush together the City and Country fields.

Take a look at the complete list of functions Looker Studio supports.

One among the niftiest is CASE. For those who’re unfamiliar, it’s essentially an IF/THEN statement. This function permits you to create custom groupings.

For instance, let’s say you’re taking a look at the table we created within the last step:

Here, Looker Studio is treating Facebook mobile traffic (m.facebook.com) and desktop traffic (Facebook) as two different sources. There’s also l.facebook.com — desktop traffic coming via a link shim, which Facebook implemented in 2008 to guard users from potential spam. What if you need to mix all Facebook traffic right into a single source?

A CASE formula solves this issue neatly. Here’s the formula:

CASE

WHEN condition THEN result

WHEN condition THEN result

ELSE result

END

You may have one condition (like the instance below) or several. The ELSE argument is optional, so be at liberty to depart it out in case you don’t need it.

Here’s the formula we’ll use to group Facebook traffic:

CASE

WHEN P_MATCH(Source,”^(l.facebook.com|m.facebook.com|facebook.com)$”) THEN “Facebook”

END

This formula tells Looker Studio, “If the source matches l.facebook.com, m.facebook.com, or facebook.com, call it ‘Facebook.’”

So as to add a CASE formula, you could find a way to edit the information source.

Click the pencil icon next to your source to bring up the information field editor.

Then click “Add a recent field” within the upper right corner.

Enter your formula.

If the formula works, you’ll see a green checkmark. Give your recent field a reputation and click on “Save.” Now you may add this field to any chart or data viz that uses this data source.

You could be pondering, “Okay, great, but was that formula written in Klingon? How do I provide you with my very own?”

Don’t know ? No problem! This blog post has five formulas to get you started.

17. Create a calculated blended field.

That is the head of Looker Studio mastery, requiring all the abilities you’ve already learned and a hearty dose of luck — just kidding, it’s super easy.

Create a blended data source per usual.

In this instance, I blended together the GA views for www.hubspot.com and blog.hubspot.com.

Then click “Add metric” > “Create Field” as you’d to create a traditional calculated field.

Enter your formula.

I desired to see “Total Users” (i.e., users from www.hubspot.com plus users from blog.hubspot.com), which is a straightforward calculation:

Note: It may possibly get a bit hairy here in case you’re using two different fields with the identical name, as I’m doing here. Sometimes Looker Studio is sensible enough to acknowledge the difference, and sometimes it’s not.

For those who run into issues, I like to recommend editing the name of 1 or each fields in the unique data source(s), which you may do at any time by clicking the pencil next to the blended data source.

Then click the pencil next to the sphere name you need to change.

This pane will appear; edit the title accordingly.

Then click “Save” and return to your calculated field to update the formula:

Done! I can now see each in my report.

Google Looker Studio is the Best Technique to Visualize Your Data

Now that you realize Looker Studio in and out, you’re well-prepared to create stunning interactive reports in your coworkers, clients, and executives. Use the information I shared above to benefit from it and successfully show the ROI of your marketing efforts.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.