Office of Marketing and Communications

Google Looker Studio

Learning to use features such as controls, filters and field creation in Google Looker Studio will increase your efficiency and help you gain insights into your marketing activities.

Applying Controls

Once you create your base dashboard, you can add controls to the dashboard to filter your data in three different ways:

  1. Page level (default): Data control is applied to the current page. No changes will be made to other pages in your dashboard. 
  2. A group of specific page elements: By grouping a data control with a few data elements on the page, you limit the filter to those data elements only. 
  3. Report level: You can right-click on the control and choose 'Make report-level' to apply to all pages of the report.

You can use three of these concurrently as well. Be careful with using too many controls - there are some instances where filtering too many elements results in data misconfigurations. These controls are best used for broad ranging applications when you want to apply the changes to multiple data elements and to offer your users flexibility. To limit the data in a data element and NOT offer a choice, apply a filter to that data element only.

To apply a control, choose "Add a control" in the main elements menu.

Here are a few ideas to get you started... 

Use Case

Control Type

Tips

You want your dashboard users to be able to filter the report by date and have that date remain consistent across pages.

Date Range Control

  • Set the default for the dashboard using the property pane at the right.
  • After you set up the control, right click and choose "Report Level" from the menu.

For campaigns with a start and end date, it can be helpful to fix these dates as the default. You can still use the control to look at other dates, but the first view will be the full campaign range.

Please note: The range you choose on any date range selector is the "automatic" date range for any data element on the page. To use comparison date ranges, you have to apply those to individual data elements. To override the date range selector for a single data element, choose "Custom" under dates in the property pane.

You want to view your base dashboard for each view in your unit property.

Data Control

If you apply a Data Control to a dashboard, users will only have a list of Views in their control that they have GA access to.

You want your dashboard users to be able to filter page 2 of your report by the web user's country. You want your users to be able to select more than one country at a time.

Drop Down List Control

  • Select "Country" as your Control Field using the property pane
  • Select the metric that you want displayed with each country from "Metric"
  • After you set up the control, right click and choose "Page Level" from the menu

The default list order will be best/largest to worst/smallest based on the metric you've chosen.

You can change the order of how the selections in the filter show up by changing the "Sort" option in the property pane. 

Users can select a single country or check the boxes to select multiples, using the search box at the top of the control to quickly find what they are looking for. 

Using Data Elements As Controls

Instead of using a Control, consider using your tables or charts as filters for information on your page. You can use the "group" feature to limit the impact of the filterable tables. Sometimes filtering on a single data element - particularly if you're using segments - may render other parts of your dashboard as errors because of data type mismatches.

To filter based on a data element, check the "Apply Filtering" box in the property pane of the element.

Creating New Fields

You can turn existing Google Analytics fields into new fields in Looker Studio. 

To create new field, choose your data source in the Data pane on the right and click 'Add a filed' underneath the source. 

The most flexible method is using CASE statements. CASE statements allow you to group things together or rename things to support your analysis needs. For example, let's say you need to understand traffic from Ohio vs. everywhere else. You could create a CASE statement that groups all regions except Ohio into a single bucket called "everything else."

Here are some resources we've found helpful in developing CASE statements for Looker Studio:

Internal Samples

If you've developed CASE statements, please share them with us! We will add them to this page for the benefit of the larger marketing community at Ohio State.

Grouping tagged campaigns by audience

CASE

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Region,"Ohio") THEN "Ohio"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Country,"United States") THEN "Domestic, Non-Resident"

ELSE "International"

END

Grouping tagged campaigns by audience

CASE

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*insights.*") THEN "Insights Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*alumni.*donor.*") THEN "Donor/Alumni Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*donor.*alumni.*") THEN "Donor/Alumni Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*alumni.*") THEN "Alumni Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*donor.*") THEN "Donor Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*faculty.*staff.*student.*") THEN "Internal Audiences Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*staff.*") THEN "Fac/Staff Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*future.*student.*") THEN "Student Recruitment Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*patient.*") THEN "Patient Campaign"

WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Campaign,".*student.*") THEN "Current Students Campaign"

ELSE Default Channel Grouping

END

Grouping Social Networks Source

CASE
    WHEN Session source IN('m.facebook.com', 'lm.facebook.com', 'l.facebook.com', 'fb', 'facebook.com', 'facebook', 'Facebook')
    THEN 'Facebook'

    WHEN Session source IN('l.instagram.com', 'instagram.com', 'instagram')
    THEN 'Instagram'    

    WHEN Session source IN('lnkd.in', 'linkedin.com', 'linkedin')
    THEN 'LinkedIn'

    WHEN Session source IN('reddit.com', 'reddit', 'out.reddit.com', 'old.reddit.com')
    THEN 'Reddit'

    WHEN Session source IN('twitter', 't.co')
    THEN 'Twitter'

    ELSE 'Other'
END