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Best practices for Looker Studio

Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) offers many useful features that you can use to enhance your Supermetrics reports.


Additionally, if you need to solve issues or optimize Looker Studio itself, Google's comprehensive troubleshooting documentation can help.


Background

This guide includes a collection of Looker Studio features that you might find useful, especially for building advanced reports.


Please note that these features are built-in Looker Studio functionalities, so Supermetrics support can only offer limited assistance. You can learn more and find troubleshooting help in the Looker Studio help center.

 

Features and best practices

Data freshness

The data freshness setting has no effect on Supermetrics connectors in Looker Studio. The Supermetrics connectors refresh the data when you do something that triggers the retrieval of data. Such as:

  • Refresh the report
  • Load the report page
  • Add or update elements on the report
Data blending

The data blending feature can be used to connect and blend data from several data sources. Using join keys, data from several sources can be used in the same chart. See our guide to learn more about data blending.

Calculated fields

Calculated fields let you create new metrics and dimensions derived from your data. There are 2 types of a calculated field in Looker Studio: data source and chart-specific fields. 


They each have different advantages and limitations. See the Looker Studio help center to learn more about calculated fields.


Calculations using basic operations

In a calculated field, you can perform any arithmetic calculations: addition (+), subtraction (-), division (/), and multiplication (*).


Calculations using functions

In addition to basic operations, Looker Studio provides a list of functions for calculated fields. See the Looker Studio help center for a full list of functions.


For example, using the Case function you can define conditions to categorize or group your data. In the example below, we only want to show two categories: Paid and Other. The Paid group will contain the medium "cpc" while the Other group will contain all other mediums.

 


Troubleshooting

If you run into error messages in your calculation, you may be applying incorrect functions to the original fields. See the Looker Studio help center for assistance with troubleshooting calculated fields.


More resources

Filters

With filters, you can refine or reduce the data shown in your report based on defined conditions. You can apply filters to a specific chart, control, page, or the whole report. To get started with filters, please refer to our guide on using filters and the Looker Studio help center.


Filter controls

In addition to chart-specific filters that can only be set by report editors, people with Viewer access can also change filter conditions to narrow down results. See the Looker Studio help center for more information and a full list of available filter controls.


For example, with an Advanced filter, viewers can select a search operator and input a specific value for filtering the data.


Extract Data

Looker Studio has a 6-minute limit on handling queries, and large data requests might cause your report to load slowly or time out. With the Extract Data connector by Google, you can explore a subset of your data and improve the speed and performance of your report, or build reports for certain cohorts of data. Learn more in our blog.


Subset with selected fields

By default, data sources are created with a full list of their supported dimensions and metrics, some of which you may not need. Using the Extract Data connector, you can handpick the dimensions and metrics that are meaningful for your reports.


Subset with a filter or date range

In the Extract Data connector settings, you can define a subset of data based on a filter condition or date range.


For example, if your campaigns are targeted at multiple locations, you can use a filter to define that "Country" is equal to the location of your choice, filtering the whole subset of data to that country. In the date range section, you can limit the dataset to a preset time frame or set custom start and end dates for your subset of data.

Tips and tricks for building charts

Decimal precision

When reporting on data in a number format, you may want to display fewer or more decimal places. You can adjust the decimal precision of a chart in the STYLE tab Metrics section.



Set the range by data

When working with a time series chart, the data from your selected date range may be squeezed in the middle of a chart that displays a longer time period. You can adjust the chart axis in the STYLE tab X-Axis section by selecting the Range by Data setting.



Comparison metrics and running calculations

In Looker Studio, you can compare your data to total and running values. You can access the comparisons and running calculations as you edit a metric. See the Looker Studio help center to learn more about adding comparison metrics and running totals.


For example, you can use the Running delta option to calculate the difference between the current row and the previous row for a view of increasing or decreasing values. 



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