Measure report usage

Get information about your report viewers with Google Analytics.
The feature or features in this article work with Universal Analytics properties. Google Analytics 4 properties aren't supported. Learn more about Universal Analytics.

Google Analytics is the most widely used digital analytics service on the internet. You can use it for free to measure anonymous data on your Data Studio report viewers, including all of the standard dimensions and metrics collected, such as pageviews, sessions, geo location, technology, and demographics.

In this article:

Set up Google Analytics

To get started with Google Analytics:

  1. If you don’t have an Analytics account, create one. If you do have an Analytics account, sign in. Both options are available at google.com/analytics:
    • Click SIGN IN > Analytics.
    • If you don’t have an account, click More options > Create account.
      If you do have an account, enter the email address and password associated with the account.
  2. Set up a property in your Analytics account. We recommend creating a new property as a dedicated collection point in Analytics for your Data Studio reports.

    Properties contain reporting views. Views let you create filtered perspectives of your data. If you are creating distinct sets of Data Studio reports, you might want to filter them into different views. For example, if you use a naming convention to distinguish the reports you create for your clients, you can filter on report name to generate views for each client.

    Learn more about the Google Analytics account structure.
  3. Copy your Google Analytics tracking ID. You will add this to each report you wish to measure.

Add your tracking ID to a report

  1. Edit the report you wish to measure.
  2. Select File > Report settings.
  3. In the bottom of the Report Settings panel, enter your Google Analytics tracking ID.
Your Universal Analytics tracking ID begins with "UA-"

See your data in Google Analytics

It may take up to 24 hours before data from your reports begins to show up in Google Analytics.

You can use any of the standard reports in Google Analytics to see your Data Studio traffic. In particular, the Home report gives you a comprehensive overview of all your traffic, while the Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report lets you see metrics for individual reports.

In the All Pages report, the default primary dimension is Page, which contains the report URL. To display the report name, use the Page Title dimension instead.

Multipage reports will be displayed as Report name > Page name.

See your data in Data Studio

To see your Data Studio traffic data in Data Studio, create a Google Analytics data source connected to the Universal Analytics property you set up for that purpose. Voilà! Beautiful, shareable reports that measure your beautiful shareable reports!

Limits of Google Analytics measurement

Currently, Google Analytics measurement in Data Studio does not include the following:

  • Events
  • Custom dimensions and custom metrics
  • User ID tracking

It is not currently possible to distinguish between report viewers who are internal to your organization vs. those who are external.

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