Looker Studio – I haven’t written anything about it for a long time. In the past period, many new features have been released, both regarding data sources and report presentation. I’ll be publishing articles on a few key topics related to these features.
As of July 2023, Universal Analytics (UA) is being phased out in favor of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). After this date, UA properties will no longer be able to process new data. They are expected to become inaccessible by the end of the year. For details on differences between property types and other operations, please refer to my article titled Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You can also request technical support at technical support.
The first article will focus on Looker Studio report settings and the integration with Google Analytics to track data from report page views. Let’s first take a look at why these settings are necessary.
Looker Studio: Report Settings
The Report settings under File enables various configuration options at the report level1.
Defining the Data Source at the Report Level
We can initially select a data source using the Data source option available in this settings section. This ensures that the relevant data source is prioritized during the report loading process.
Tracking Page Views with Google Analytics
Google Analytics Measurement IDs enable us to monitor relevant report page/screen views using GA4 (G-XXXXXXXXXX) and UA (UA-XXXXX-Y) property IDs2, allow us to create audience segments based on the report view data, and improve user experience specifically within reports.
# Domain: https://datastudio.google.com/..
../reporting/report-id/page/page-id
../reporting/report-id/page/page-id/edit
../reporting/report-id/page/page-id/appviewIf you have corporate reports created and need to measure the performance of the pages associated with these reports, simply enter the corresponding property IDs into the field provided here.
Then, each page within the report will be listed under the Google Analytics page views section with the page title as the report page name. For example, if the report title is Analytics Report, the page title will be specified accordingly. Additionally, the page headers within the report will also be appended to the report title.
Report Title > Page TitlePage View and Filter Parameters
The paths for pages created via GDS are considered based on whether the report is in Edit or View mode. If the option Custom bookmark links is selected in the report settings, the filter selections made by users will appear as query parameters within the URL3. As a result, these query parameters will also appear in the Google Analytics page view data.
In GDS reports, by adding a Date range control filter, users viewing the report can define a date range4. However, in addition to this option, it is also possible to specify a predefined date selection (such as last 30 days (last 30 days), yesterday (yesterday), today (today), etc.) via the Add a control feature, even if the date setting option is not available or if a default selection is to be assigned for the existing date range.
Filters at the Report Level
Filters created in a visual context or directly edited within a report can be applied to all pages within the report scope and to the visuals present on those pages via the report settings (report settings)5. This enables excluding development and testing environments, users from specific countries/cities, or simply applying visualizations to only the designated data sets.