Tutorial: Create a Google Analytics data source

A data source provides the data for a Looker Studio report. In this lesson, you'll create a data source that connects to one of your Google Analytics views.

In this article:

• Connect to your Google Analytics account
• Configure the data source
• Name the data source
• Share the data source
• Use the data source in reports
• Related resources

Connect to your Google Analytics account

The first step in creating a data source is to connect to your data set.

1. Sign in to Looker Studio.
2. In the top left, click  then select Data Source.
3. In the connectors panel, select Google Analytics.
   
   
4. Select an Account and Property. To connect to Universal Analytics, also select a View.
   Note: connecting the Google Analytics 4 is a Labs feature. Learn more about the data you can see.
   
5. Click CONNECT in the upper right. The fields panel appears.

Configure the data source

The fields panel contains all the dimensions (the green chips) and metrics (the blue chips) from the data set. You can fine-tune the data source by renaming or disabling fields, adding calculated fields, and changing the aggregation and data type.

Learn more about modeling your data.

To create a basic report using Google Analytics data, you usually don't need to make any changes to the data source.

Data source credentials

Credentials determine who can see the data provided by this data source. The default setting is Owner's Credentials, which allows anyone using this data source to see the data as if they were the owner of the data source. This means viewers of a report that uses this data source can see the data without needing their own access to the data set.

You can instead require each user of the data source and any reports built on it to provide their own credentials to the data set. To do this:

1. In the upper right of the fields panel, click Using Owner's Credentials
2. In the Data source access dialog, click Viewer's Credentials
3. Click SAVE.

Learn more about working with data source fields.

Name the data source

Looker Studio automatically names your data source the same as your data set name. If you want to change that, click the name in the upper left and enter a new name.

You can also rename the data source later from the DATA SOURCES home page by clicking the context menu and selecting Rename.

Share the data source

You can let other editors add this data source to reports by sharing it with them.

To share a data source

1. In the upper right, click
2. Enter the email addresses or Google Groups you want to share with
3. For each person or group, select the access (permissions). Permissions determine what other people can do with the data source. Your choices are:
   • Can view. People with this permission can view but not edit the data source.
   • Can edit. People with this permission can both view and edit the data source.

Use the data source in reports

You can now create reports that get their data from your Google Analytics view:

1. Click CREATE REPORT in the upper right
2. Click ADD TO REPORT in the You are about to add a data source to this report dialog.

Related resources

• Google Analytics connector
• Report tutorials
• Share a data source
• Copy a data source
• Calculated fields
• Data source credentials