How to Use Looker Studio with Google Analytics

Tired of being stuck with the default reports in Google Analytics 4? While GA4 is powerful, its reporting interface can feel rigid and limited when you need to create a truly custom view of your website's performance. Connecting Google Analytics to Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is the best way to break free from those constraints. This article will walk you through exactly how to connect your GA4 data to Looker Studio and build a dynamic, interactive dashboard from scratch.

Why Bother Connecting Google Analytics to Looker Studio?

You might be wondering if it's worth the effort to use another tool. After all, GA4 has its own "Explore" reports section for creating custom views. While true, Looker Studio offers a suite of advantages that make it an indispensable tool for marketers and analysts.

1. Total Customization and Flexibility

The main draw of Looker Studio is its blank canvas approach. Instead of adapting pre-built widgets, you build everything from the ground up. You decide the layout, the chart types, the colors, and exactly which metrics and dimensions are displayed. Want a big scorecard showing your total revenue right next to a line chart of daily users? Easy. Need a geo map of users next to a pie chart of traffic sources? No problem. This level of control allows you to design reports that tell a specific story and answer the exact questions your team or clients are asking.

2. Interactive, User-Friendly Reports

Looker Studio dashboards aren't just static images, they're interactive. You can add dynamic date range filters, drop-down menus to filter by device or country, and more. This empowers anyone viewing the report - even non-technical stakeholders - to explore the data for themselves. Imagine sending your client a link to a dashboard where they can independently select last month's date range and filter for mobile traffic only, all without ever needing to log into Google Analytics.

3. Blend Data from Multiple Sources

Your business's story isn't just told by website traffic. It's also told by your ad campaigns, email marketing, sales efforts, and organic search performance. Looker Studio's real power comes from its ability to merge data sources. You can pull in Google Analytics data and combine it with data from:

Google Ads: Show your ad spend and conversions side-by-side.
Google Search Console: Compare rankings and clicks with website sessions and user behavior.
Google Sheets: Import sales targets, offline conversion data, or budget information to add business context to your web analytics.
YouTube Analytics: Track how your video content drives traffic to your website.

Blending data sources allows you to create a single, unified view of your entire marketing funnel, something that's simply not possible within the confines of Google Analytics alone.

4. Easily Share and Automate Your Reporting

Forget exporting CSVs and manually screenshotting charts. In Looker Studio, you can share a live-updating dashboard with a simple link, just like a Google Doc. You have full control over permissions, allowing you to grant "view only" access to clients or "edit" access to team members. Even better, you can set up automated email delivery to send a PDF copy of your report to key stakeholders every Monday morning, putting your reporting on autopilot.

Step-by-Step: Connecting GA4 to Looker Studio

Getting your Google Analytics 4 data into Looker Studio is straightforward thanks to Google's official connector. Just follow these steps.

1. Open Looker Studio and Start a New Report

Navigate to lookerstudio.google.com and sign in with the Google account that has access to your Google Analytics property. In the top-left corner, click the "Create" button and select "Report" from the drop-down menu.

2. Select the Google Analytics Connector

You’ll immediately see a panel labeled "Add data to report". From the list of Google Connectors, find and click on "Google Analytics".

3. Authorize the Connection

If this is your first time using the connector, Looker Studio will ask for permission to access your Google Analytics data. Click the "AUTHORIZE" button and follow the prompts from your Google account. This process grants Looker Studio read-only access to your GA data.

4. Choose Your GA4 Property

Once authorized, you'll see a list of all the Google Analytics accounts you have access to. Find the correct Account, then select the desired GA4 Property. A final column will appear for you to select the property again - don't worry, this is normal for the GA4 connector. Once selected, click the "Add" button in the bottom right corner.

5. Add Data to Your Report

A final confirmation pop-up will appear. Click the "Add to Report" button. That's it! Your Google Analytics data source is now successfully connected to your new, blank Looker Studio report.

Building Your First GA4 Performance Dashboard

Now for the fun part: turning that blank canvas into a valuable dashboard. We’ll build a simple but powerful performance overview dashboard that covers KPIs, traffic trends, and audience sources.

Setting Up The Dashboard Canvas

Before adding charts, let's set up the page. In the toolbar, click on "Theme and layout". Here you can adjust the canvas size, choose pre-made color themes, or create a custom palette to match your brand colors. A good starting canvas size for widescreen monitors is 1600px wide by 1200px tall.

Let's also add a title. Use the "Text" tool from the toolbar to create a text box at the top of your report and give it a clear title, like "Website Performance Overview".

Displaying High-Level KPIs with Scorecards

Scorecards are perfect for displaying your most important, high-level metrics at a glance. We’ll add a few to show key performance indicators (KPIs).

Click "Add a chart" from the toolbar and select "Scorecard".
Place it near the top of your report. By default, it might display "Views".
With the scorecard selected, look at the "Properties" panel that appears on the right. Under the "Metric" section, click the existing metric (e.g., Views) and search for "Total Users".
Repeat this process to create additional scorecards for key metrics like Sessions, Conversions, and Engagement Rate.
Pro Tip: In the Properties panel for each scorecard, scroll down to the "Default date range" section and choose a "Comparison date range" like "Previous period" or "Previous year". This automatically adds a percentage change comparison, providing immediate context on performance trends.

Visualizing Trends with a Time Series Chart

Next, let's see how our user and session traffic trends over time.

Go to "Add a chart" > "Time series chart".
Draw a large rectangle across the dashboard below your scorecards.
In the Properties panel, ensure the "Dimension" is set to "Date".
For the "Metric", you can add multiple. Let’s track both Users and Sessions. Click to add a metric and search for "Active Users" and then "Sessions". You should now see two distinct lines on your chart, showing how these key metrics have changed over your selected date period.

Analyzing Traffic Sources with a Bar Chart

Where is your traffic coming from? A bar chart is a great way to visualize this.

Select "Add a chart" > "Bar chart".
Place it on your dashboard.
In the Properties panel, for the "Dimension," choose "Session default channel group". This will break down your traffic by channels like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, etc.
For the "Metric", select "Sessions" to instantly see your top-performing channels by traffic volume.

Understanding Your Audience with a Map and Table

Let’s add two more helpful visualizations: one to see where users are located and another to see what devices they’re using.

Geo Chart: Go to "Add a chart" > "Google Maps". Set the "Location" dimension to "Country" and the "Metric" to "Total Users" to get a heatmap of where your audience is from.
Table: Click "Add a chart" > "Table". For the "Dimension", select "Device category". For the "Metrics", add "Total Users", "Sessions", and "Conversions". This table will clearly show you how performance differs across desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Making Your Dashboard Interactive

An interactive dashboard is a useful dashboard. The single most important element you can add is a date range control.

From the toolbar, select "Add a control" and choose "Date range control".
Place this control at the top right of your report. Now, anyone with access can click on it and change the date range for every chart on the dashboard simultaneously.
You can also add a drop-down filter. Select "Add a control" > "Drop-down list". For the "Control field", choose a dimension like "Device category". Now users can filter the entire report to see data for only mobile visitors or only desktop visitors.

Final Thoughts

By connecting Google Analytics to Looker Studio, you can transform your raw data into a flexible, beautifully designed, and deeply insightful reporting tool. This process lets you move past the limitations of Standard Reports in GA4 to build dynamic, shareable dashboards that truly answer your team's most important business questions.

Creating these dashboards is a huge leap forward, but it can still involve a lot of manual setup - dragging, dropping, and configuring each chart. That's why we built Graphed. We automate the entire dashboard creation process. Just connect data sources like Google Analytics, and then ask questions in plain English like "Show me my top traffic channels by conversions in a bar chart for the last 90 days." Graphed instantly builds the exact visualization you need, helping you get from data to insight in seconds, not hours.