InformThe link between GA4 and Looker Studio is not necessarily one-way. Looker Studio's integration with Google Analytics (GA4) goes beyond just sending data in. You can also send information out – like which pages are viewed, edited, or filtered in your dashboards – to track internal usage within GA4 and create a usage report in Looker Studio itself.
Here's the surprising part: setting it up is super simple. You only need to fill in one field in your Looker Studio report settings. What’s more, this GA4 property can then form the basis of another Looker Studio data source, making it possible to create a Looker Studio dashboard to report on your other dashboards.
Intrigued? In this tutorial, we will guide you through creating this meta-dashboard and show you how (and why!) you should track your custom report usage.
Preparing your source dashboards
Before you begin, you will need at least edit-level access to both Looker Studio and Google Analytics.
In our example, we will be tracking two preexisting Looker Studio dashboards, ‘Dashboard A’ and ‘Dashboard B’ (feel free to get creative with your own names!). Both contain multiple pages. We will refer to them as our ‘source dashboards’ since they will supply the data to the new GA4 property and Looker Studio dashboard we are going to create.
The type and contents of the data sources used within Dashboard A and Dashboard B will not have an impact on tracking, but the overall name of the dashboard and pages will do, so ensure these are clear and descriptive.
One of our two source dashboards
We start by creating a new GA4 property and web data stream to house the data. You may opt to send the data to a pre-existing property instead. Make a note of the data stream Measurement Id, and go through the standard set-up process.
Linking Looker Studio to GA4
In our source dashboard, we go to File > Report settings to open the Report Settings pane. Under Google Analytics Measurement IDs, we paste the measurement id of the data stream we just created. From this point on, all page views as well as some basic interactions, such as those enabled by Enhanced Measurement, occurring on Dashboard A will be recorded. We repeat this in Dashboard B to see data from both within the same GA4 property.
Enter your Measurement Id in the Report Settings pane
Additional Configuration: Tracking Page Filters
With one more step we can can also track when filters are being used.
Under where you enter your GA4 Measurement Id in your source Looker Studio reports is an option to enable Custom bookmark links. This adds parameters to the end of the URL for each page containing the current filter settings, allowing you to easily return to a specific configuration. You can read more about custom bookmark links here.
With Custom bookmark links enabled, you will be able to report on the number of times a filter was applied to each page of your dashboard.. You can use the ‘Page path + query string’ dimension to see how often each page was filtered and in what ways.
Reporting on Looker Studio in GA4
Use ‘Page title and screen name’ as your primary dimension to see a clear breakdown by Dashboard Name › Page Name. (Pro tip: make sure to use the right character ‘›’ not ‘>’ when filtering for a specific page).
Since page URLs contain /edit/ when a user is in edit-mode you can also use the ‘Page path and screen class’ dimension to easily distinguish between those who are viewing a page and those who are working on it. Code is given at the end of this guide to create a calculated field to see this more clearly within Looker Studio.
Event-wise, you should be able to see automatic events such as session_start and user_engagement and enhanced measurement events such as scrolls and downloads (though downloads will appear in the reports as ‘click’ events, being interpreted by Google as outbound links to the download preview screen that starts "blob:…)
See who used your dashboards in the last 30 minutes in the Real-time Report
Creating a Looker Studio usage report from your GA4 Data
This is the bit you likely already know. Create a new, blank Looker Studio report, and select Google Analytics as a data source. Now we can use the property we just created to build a new data source to report on Looker Studio from within Looker Studio itself. We made a separate dashboard for this, but there’s nothing stopping us piping data from a source dashboard back into itself!
In this example we have scorecards for total Active users and Views. We can also filter the Views metric by Page path + query string to get just a count of Views in edit mode or Views where a filter has been applied to the report.
Drilling down further, we have tables to monitor the number of Users and Views per dashboard page, so we can see what content is being viewed most frequently, and, by using a calculated field we can even see whether the users are in ‘view’ or ‘edit’ mode at the time.
We also have breakdowns of what events are occurring and, using another calculated field, what filters are being applied. All of this gives you a clearer picture of how often and in what ways your team is interacting with your reports.
Calculated Fields
Use the below calculated field formulas for a clearer view of how users are interacting with your dashboards.
Dimension: User Mode Distinguishes whether user is viewing or editing a given dashboard page.
Dimension: Filter String When Custom bookmark links are enabled, this will display the parameters related to any currently applied to a given dashboard page.
[Ed. note: click here for a copyable version of the above code]
Be aware that as an encoded string this will not be in a human-readable format by default, though can be easily decoded out-of-platform and should take a form similar to
params={”filter_id”:”include IN value_selected”}
Conclusion
Following these simple steps, you should be ready to set up page and event tracking within a Looker Studio dashboard and pass data back and forth between the platform and GA4.
This simple setup lets you see who's using your reports and how; creating a valuable feedback loop for monitoring your internal report usage. Imagine the benefits you can unlock including identifying popular reports and filters, optimising content based on actual usage and gaining valuable insights into team behaviour!
Looking for more Looker Studio hints and tips from our in-house experts? Check out our introduction to Looker Studio course or explore more complex analysis in Analysing and Visualising Data in Looker.
Molly Crump
