This guide is intended to show you how to automatically share your Google Data Studio report if you’re looking for a bit of help setting one up you can check out this guide and free template.

Step 1 – Check your share settings

I wrote this little guide on making sure your GDS report is visible to anyone receiving the link when sharing it. You can check it out for more detail but you need to make sure your report is set up so that Link Sharing is On and “Anyone with a link can view“.

Step 2 – Schedule email delivery

Scheduling automatic email delivery is very simple to do and is great and ensuring the great performance you’re achieving is being shared.

You’re going to want to click the drop-down on the button “Share” and select “Schedule email delivery”.

Here you can set the following:

• Recipents email adresses
• Custom Subject & Message
• Preview pages which are attached as JPG images
• The first delivery time and date
• And also the repeating schedule

The report is also sent as a PDF document, which loses its interactivity but can be useful for backing up your reports as proof of its existence.

I’ll leave you to decide what you include in your email, the important part of the delivery is ensuring it’s sent every month.

Here are the settings I use, but the principle is to set the first delivery for the 1st of the following month and I choose to send the reports in the morning.

You can adjust this to suit your needs accordingly, for example, if you wanted the report to be sent bi-weekly adjust the “Every” option like so.

Let me know if you have any questions about this, leave a comment or get in contact!

Step 1 – Create the report

Make sure you’ve got a report to share, if you’ve somehow landed here but haven’t created a report yet, you can check out this free template.

Step 2 – Enabling sharing

You need to make sure you’ve got sharing enabled so that anyone with a link can view the report. I feel it’s important to do this so that if the person you’ve shared the report with wants to share it with someone else, potentially this is for a client so they want management or C-level board member, etc to see it, for example, they will have no issues viewing the report and sentiment towards you is increased.

To enable this you’re going to want to click the “Share” button in the top right corner. Make sure to click the button itself and not the drop-down.

Here you can then share it with a specific person and only they alone, as well as yourself, will be able to view the report. Make sure you click the text “Add people” before you hit send otherwise it won’t register what you’re trying to do. This is one of the annoying nuances of sharing Google Data Studio Reports.

To make sure the report is visible to anyone with a link you need to select the “Manage access” tab. By default, the report Link sharing is “Off – only specific people can access“.

You need to update this to suit your needs, I tend to play it safe with “Anyone with the link can view“.

Step 3 – Sharing the report

Then the finally the last step is getting a share-friendly URL to send to the intended recipient.

Back to the “Share” button but this time, you’ll need to select the drop-down arrow to pull up different options. We’re going to select “Get report link”.

Then all you need to do is simply copy and paste the link provided.

If you have any more questions about sharing your Google Data Studio report or GDS in general, just get in contact or leave a comment below!

I’ve been working with Google Data Studio, sometimes referred too as GDS, for over a year now and I think it’s a fantastic tool to help freelancers, agencies and anyone working in the digital work to help showcase the work you’re doing for clients or your boss.

It can be daunting when starting out with Data Studio on knowing where to begin, how everything works, etc. This isn’t a how to set up Google Data studio report guide specifically but it will cover some fundamentals on getting started using my template! Here’s a quick introduction to GDS if you’re not too sure what it is.

Introduction to Google Data Studio

How to use my Google Data Studio template

Template Link : https://datastudio.google.com/s/oYAQHcBWldc

Step 1: Data Sources

The first thing you’ll need to do, after you’ve agreed to the T&C’s, https://datastudio.google.com/overview, we need to create the data sources. To do this you’ll need access to the site’s Google Analytics reporting view and Google Search Console property.

Create a new data source for the following:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console – URL
• Google Search Console – Site

How to create a new data source in Google Data Studio

In the top left corner of GDS, click the “Create” button.

Then Select “Data source”.

Name your data source and Select your connector. In this example, we’ll set a new Google Analytics connection.

Top tip! Make sure the name is unique, this makes it easier when building and creating your reports.

Authorize your connector and then select the view you want to use. Select Connect in the top right corner once you’ve found the view.

If you’re not using my template, then that’s it – you’ve created your first data source!

But if you want to use my template you’ll need to set up some additional fields in your connectors. Let’s keep going with the Google Analytics connector as an example, but you’ll need to create Google Search Console connectors for both “Site Impression” and “Url Impression” to continue with this guide a little further down.

Creating a Calculated Field in Google Data Studio

For my report to work as intended, we need to create Calculated Fields. If you’re following along from above, you should see a list of fields in front of you, select “Add Field” in the top right corner.

If not, you’ll need to find the data source you want to edit, simply click the data source and you’ll see the list of fields.

Calculated Fields allow you to do many amazing things but we’re just going to be using some simple CASE functions, you can check out a full list of functions here.

For Google Analytics we only need to create one Calculated Field for my report template called “Themes”.

Google Analytics Calculated Fields

Themes

CASE
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Landing Page, ".*/example/.*") THEN "Example"
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Landing Page, ".*/test/.*") THEN "Test"
END

Google Search Console Site Calculated Fields

Keyword Type

CASE
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Query, ".*brand.*name.*") THEN "Brand"
ELSE "Non-brand"
END

Themes

CASE
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Query, ".*example.*") THEN "Example"
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Query, ".*test.*") THEN "Test"
END

SERP

CONCAT("https://www.google.com/search?q=", Query)

Note: You can update the local of the SERPs by changing the Google domain.

SERP Link

HYPERLINK(SERP, IMAGE("https://grwst.one/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/search.png"))

Google Search Console URL Calculated Fields

Themes

CASE
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Landing Page, ".*/example/.*") THEN "Example"
WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(Landing Page, ".*/test/.*") THEN "Test"
END

URL Link

HYPERLINK(Landing Page, IMAGE("https://grwst.one/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/search.png"))

Creating a Google My Business Connector

For this, we’re going to be using Jepto’s Google My Business Connector, which is free to use! Follow their instructions and you’ll be good to go!

Step 2: Creating your report

Once your data sources have been created, in order, we can now look at setting up your first report by copying my template.

Open up my report template https://datastudio.google.com/s/oYAQHcBWldc and you’re going to want to make a copy.

The next step is to line up your data sources with mine. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to make these visible to you, if anyone can share any light on this that would be much appreciated, here are the current share settings on these data sources.

In the pop-up the order is as follows.

• Google Analytics connector
• GSC Site connector
• GSC URL connector
• Jepto GMB connector

Once you’re happy, click “Copy Report”.

Now there are only a few steps to ensure the report is fully working, this is where the Calculated Fields come into play.

Word Visibility

On Page 5. Word Visibility you’ll notice some broken charts and filters, here’s what you need to do.

For the broken filters, you’ll need to assign the dimensions “Keyword Type” and “Themes”.

In the main chart, replace the Invalid Dimension with “SERP Link” and rename it to “-” for display purposes.

Page visibility

On Page 6. Page Visibility you’ll notice some more broken charts and filters, here’s what you need to do.

For the filter, assign it the Dimension “Themes” and for the chart repeat the process above but adding “URL Link” instead.

Traffic

On page 9. Traffic, you only need to update one filter, assigning the Dimension “Themes”.

You can use the search function in the data tab to make finding the right dimension easier.

Step 3: How to share your Data Studio report

The final step is ensuring your new GDS report can be seen by your clients! You need to make sure that the following settings have been updated.

Click the “Share” button in the top right-hand corner, not the drop down, just the button.

Select the tab “Manage access” and change the drop-down to “Anyone with the link can view”.

Click Save. This means that when you get a share-friendly URL, anyone will be able to view your amazing work!

Report Test: https://datastudio.google.com/s/mACOMCR0R0I

If you’ve got any questions, leave a comment or get in contact. Also if you have any suggestions for streamlining the process above please let me know!

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