Looker Studio Pro. Dawn of a new era?
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Overview
What is Looker Studio?
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
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Popular Features
- Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.) (49)9.393%
- Customizable dashboards (50)9.292%
- Report sharing and collaboration (50)6.565%
- Report Formatting Templates (49)5.151%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
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What is Looker Studio?
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details
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- Tech Details
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What is Looker Studio?
Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is a data visualization platform from Google that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
Looker Studio is a part of Google's Looker Suite for business intelligence. Looker Studio is a self-serve BI solution where less technical users can create charts and reports, while Looker is a complete, enterprise BI platform, where technical users can build complex models that consider every aspect of the business. Looker Studio offers both free and pro versions, while Looker is not available for free.
Looker Studio vs. Looker
Looker Studio is a part of Google's Looker Suite for business intelligence. Looker Studio is a self-serve BI solution where less technical users can create charts and reports, while Looker is a complete, enterprise BI platform, where technical users can build complex models that consider every aspect of the business. Looker Studio offers both free and pro versions, while Looker is not available for free.
Looker Studio Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
Reviewers rate Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization highest, with a score of 9.4.
The most common users of Looker Studio are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
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Reviews
(1-12 of 12)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 29, 2023
Best Analytical tool
As data analysts, we have to create the report and dashboard in GDS. So, we have integrated some data sources like Google Analytics, Google Ads, FB Ads, Quickbooks, and others. I created many dashboards as per the requirement like costing, profit, marketing, sales, etc.
- Visualization design of dashboards.
- Integration with data sources
- Smooth access of BigQuery
- Creating aggregate function can be more smooth.
- Data banding can be improve.
- 3rd party integration of other data sources can be smooth and reliable.
March 15, 2022
A great Business Intelligence tool developed by Google
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Google Data Studio on daily basis. By using that we can figure out how many people use our systems, how many people want to play, how much they spend. We can easily do comparison analysis. We use all analytical metrics to provide it our managers to make a decision.
- It is online service. You don't need to upload an application to use it and it's free.
- It has many visualization tools.
- You can use many data sources to connect your data with Data Studio. For example Google Analytics, Google Sheets are among most popular choices for users.
- It is not that easy to learn Data Studio without tutorials and as I know Google don't have video lessons for Data Studio.
- Sometimes Data Studio can't differentiate metrics from dimensions.
- Charts sometimes don't work properly. You need to reload them again to fix errors.
July 18, 2021
Great for not-so-complex analytics and dashboards
The Google Data Studio platform provides us with the ability to perform simple analytics on various datasets in order to discover trends and present that data to management in a simple, easy-to-understand format. While first party connector support may be limited, the ability to use CSV files as an interchange format allows us to cover most systems from time and attendance to simple excel exports.
- Ease of use
- User interface / look-and-feel of reports
- Pricing (has a free option)
- CSV file support minimizes barriers to entry
- First party connector support can be improved
- Complex visualizations / datasets may not be possible
- Cannot be used on-premise, which may cause issues with data compliance
April 27, 2021
Great for Tight Budgets or Simple Data Visualization
[I used Google Data Studio to] create a dashboard for each of my clients that combines all their data sources (social, ad networks, Analytics, etc.) into one easy to read report for them. I download a PDF for them to view each month, but I also send the link to the dashboard in case they want to view it or play around with the metrics. I've found that many clients are often asking for updates on the performance of the campaigns or site performance, so giving them an easy one-stop-shop where they can find all their performance data is very convenient.
- Easy to design/brand
- Native data support for all Google products such as Adwords, Search Console, and Analytics
- Constantly improving and growing
- No native support for many outside sources like Facebook or Twitter (must build own or use third party software)
- Many features that are available in Tableau or other dataviz solutions aren't available yet
- Available templates aren't styled using default colors, so you have to update the color palette of each module by hand.
- Data Score boxes are very limited in what they can report
September 10, 2020
A Good, Free Tool to Aggregate and Visualize Data for Client Reporting
We use Google Data Studio to create reports for our clients using several data sources, including Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights, Facebook/Instagram Ads. It allows us to easily customize how we show the data from the various sources and allows us to filter, highlight, and customize the color palette.
- Combines data sources into one report.
- It's free.
- Filtering is easy.
- It's intuitive if you understand analytics and ads.
- Allows you to send automated reports from your own email rather than from Google.
April 24, 2020
Perfect Free visualization tool!
We are currently using it in our marketing department to visualize data from our websites.
We connected the platform with Google Analytics, so we are able to create graphs and dashboards super easily, compared to exporting the data and creating graphs in PowerPoint as it was done before. It allows us to focus on the data, rather than fetching the information.
We connected the platform with Google Analytics, so we are able to create graphs and dashboards super easily, compared to exporting the data and creating graphs in PowerPoint as it was done before. It allows us to focus on the data, rather than fetching the information.
- General user friendliness of the platform.
- Straight forward integration with Google Analytics - no table manipulations needed.
- Easy to add filters on a page or graph level.
- Integration with Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads is not super easy. We need to go through a third party tool.
- Sometimes it takes time to load the data.
- Doesn't work super well on all browsers - although never had issues using Chrome.
June 19, 2019
Lightweight tool, perfect for a small organization looking to scratch the surface of data visualization
Google Data Studio is currently being used to share client metrics with our internal stakeholders. We have other third party systems push data into Google Sheets and from there Google Data Studio can ingest the data set. Admittedly it is currently a free tool which makes it simple and easy for our organization to utilize and interact with regularly. I enjoy the different data visualization tools and I don't encounter too many bugs/errors.
- Data visualization
- Library of data visualization templates
- Intuitive
- Easy to share results especially if you already use G Suite\
- Like any tool, it would be nice to spend time learning and leveraging everything it has to offer
- Adding additional third party data connections
June 14, 2019
Nothing to hate with Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio was used in the interim before Tableau became our tool of choice. Google Data Studio is a versatile, low-cost alternative to Tableau for data visualization. In addition to having a low cost of entry to visualization, it can be relatively easy to set up for any user with little to no experience.
- Initial setup is well supported by Google.
- Versatile, especially if utilizing other Google marketing products.
- Clean visualizations courtesy of Google's material design.
- Connecting to databases wasn't as easy to set up as Tableau.
- Not as customizable as other BI programs.
- Browser only.
May 04, 2019
Looking for a FREE Data Visualization tool? Then Google Data Studio (P.S. Free For a Reason)
Google Data Studio is our organization's current aggregate data visualization tool for all organic media (Instagram, Facebook), marketing analytics tools (Firebase, Google Analytics, Google Search Console), and other user information software (Cooper - CRM, PostgresSQL, Google Sheets).
Our team's marketing department frequently looks at reports and dashboards to see leading and lagging KPIs across each platform.
Google Data Studio allows us to view all our data sources in one location, track A/B multivariate tests with WoW and MoM data, and makes it easy to make decisions and conducts tests as the data is presented in an easy-to-consume format.
Our team's marketing department frequently looks at reports and dashboards to see leading and lagging KPIs across each platform.
Google Data Studio allows us to view all our data sources in one location, track A/B multivariate tests with WoW and MoM data, and makes it easy to make decisions and conducts tests as the data is presented in an easy-to-consume format.
- Pre-loaded Report Templates: Without a data visualization experience/training it's most likely difficult to set up the desired dashboard you envision. Fortunately, Google Data Studio offers pre-loaded reports for the most common data source connections. These common connections include: Google Ads, Firebase, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and more. They save a lot of time and are easy to substitute data variables.
- Being a remote company, it can be difficult to share in real-time... not with Google Data Studio. If our team is viewing the data on a call, we are able to update the dashboard in real-time and everyone is able to see the changes made without refreshing. Subsequently, as one user is able to change data parameters (dates, labels, etc) and the rest viewing the data are able to follow along.
- It can be difficult to get ideas how you should prepare your data - which KPIs should I include? In what order? Should I use a pie graph or bar chart? Thanks to Featured Data Studio reports I'm able to look at shared reports generated by others to get ideas on how to set up similar data.
- While Google Data Studio has a resources (video tutorial) tab, it's very basic. The tutorials state navigational answers to exploring around the site, setting up data connections, and creating calculated fields. The videos are outdated 2016 and older and rarely dig into the actual building of reports and dashboards, especially with Google-owned products.
- In order to connect solutions outside Google's products such as 3rd party tools, you need to pay a subscription to a 3rd party service to connect the data. The two main companies (Supermetrics, Power My Analytics) help you connect these 3rd party tools through their subscription services.
- Notification of data connections being removed. On a few occasions, I will enter Google Data Studio only to find out there is missing data and that I need to reconnect a data source. While this doesn't happen too often it would be ideal to be notified so I can fix this right away rather than be notified by a team member that the connection is broken.
April 04, 2019
Google's BI tool is slowly capturing the market
We use it for our reporting needs. We connect our Google Analytics to Data Studio through the connector. Data Studio helps me to do much more in-depth analyses than what is presented in Google Analytics. We use it currently in our department and we are planning to expand it throughout our region. Apart from Google Analytics, we connect it to our database to do analysis and reporting.
- Drag and drop your metrics and dimensions and you will get the report, the interface is super clean and it calculates real quick.
- Scheduling the report: you can schedule the process of downloading the report in PDF and sending it to you or your customers weekly/monthly.
- Frequent updates from Google makes this tool a go-to tool compared to other BI tools. You can also try the free version and it is amazing.
- One of the biggest drawbacks is that it requires connectors. Data Studio is a great tool as long as you connect Google products/separate files (Excel ), but when it comes to connecting third-party integrations, it's either complicated or not yet available.
I use Google Data Studio as a data visualization tool to build dashboards and create reports. It easily integrates with other Google platforms such as Google Analytics and Google Ads (AdWords) which saves me time from having to export my data from each of these platforms and then import into a 3rd party data visualization tool.
- Data integration -- Connects easily with GA, Adwords, Search Console, Facebook Ads, GMB and many more!
- Live Data Connection -- It can pull data in real time from GA, Google Ads, GSC etc in real-time without having to refresh data.
- Dynamic controls -- Ability to interact with charts and widgets make the dashboards more appealing and informative.
- Increase support for connectors -- Currently, only about 150 data connectors are available.
- Limited data visualization options and widgets -- Something that can definitely be improved.
- Ability to slice and dice the data.
Google Data Studio is used on a per-user basis within the organization to import, manipulate, and visualize datasets. Google Data Studio functions as a dashboard for displaying data analysis to a variety of audiences: internal presentations and client-facing purposes. It was used primarily within the data and analytics department (who gathered specs and built/deployed the dashboards) and accessed by account managers and clients. It is a useful platform for quickly prototyping/designing different dashboard/visualization strategies without investing the resources on a comprehensive or especially sophisticated solution.
- Quickly build and prototype dashboards to test proof-of-concepts for data visualization.
- Hosted on Google which means it's accessible internally and externally to different parties (dev, data/analytics, client reps, account management).
- Well-maintained community connectors and documentation for extensive platform/data source support.
- Community connectors are developed by third parties and sometimes cost money, which can disrupt building free dashboards
- Reconciling disparate / multiple file types can be a hassle and usually requires doing it off-site (in SQL) to create a master data set for ingestion and viz in the Data Studio platform