How to setup our GSC dashboard

Instructions incoming.

Our free GSC report is a bit more complex to set-up than a normal report (i.e. because we have a bunch of cool features), you can’t just simply make a copy.

But don’t worry we’re going to walk you through how to do it.

Are you a video person?

If so we've got a video version of this post you can watch here.

1. Head over to our resource library to get access to all our templates

You can find that over here.

get template

Open it up and then come back here.

2. Create a data source to Looker Studio

You might notice if you tried to jumping straight to copying the report that you won’t be able to see your default search console connectors.

Instead you'll need to add a data source and set it up first. Here's how you do that.

Open up Looker Studio > [Create] > [Data Source]

create data source

Then you’re going to:

Name it
Select your site
Select URL impression
Select web

name data source

Now we're ready to setup the data source it.

3. Editing the data source

There are two big things we need to do:

Create custom fields
Add custom parameters

add custom fields and parameters

There’s quite a few of these so we’re going to walk through them one by one.

3a. Parameters we need to add

You’ll first need to go through and make all these parameters. The form looks like this:

setup parameters

Here are all the ones we need to make.

Breakdown Selection Parameter

Name: Breakdown Selection Parameter
ID: breakdown_selection
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - Device Category, Device Category
  - Country, Country

Breakdown Selection 2 Parameter

Name: Breakdown Selection 2
ID: breakdown_selection_id_2
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - page, Page
  - query, Query

Daily or Weekly Breakdown

Name: Daily or Weekly Breakdown
ID: daily_or_weekly_breakdown
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - daily, Daily
  - weekly, Weekly

Metric Selection 1 Parameter

Name: Metric Selection 1 Parameter
ID: metric_selection_1
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - Clicks, Clicks
  - Impressions, Impressions
  - CTR, CTR
  - Avg. Rank, Avg. Rank

Metric Selection 2 Parameter

Name: Metric Selection 2 Parameter
ID: metric_selection_2_parameter
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - Clicks, Clicks
  - Impressions, Impressions
  - CTR, CTR
  - Avg. Rank, Avg. Rank

Metric Selection 3 Parameter

Name: Metric Selection 3 Parameter
ID: metric_selection_3_parameter
Data Type: Text
Permitted values:
- List of values (value, label):
  - Clicks, Clicks
  - Impressions, Impressions
  - CTR, CTR
  - Avg. Rank, Avg. Rank

3b. Fields we need to add

Once we've added all the parameters now we need to add new fields.

setup field

We need to set all 3 following pieces for a field:

Field Name
Field ID
Formula

You need to remember to also set Field ID otherwise Looker Studio will get confused and mix up fields when copying the report.

Field: Breakdown selection

What does it do: Used in report selection.
Field name: Breakdown Selection
Field ID: calc_ipmiq0zpgd

Formula:

CASE 
    WHEN Breakdown Selection Parameter = "Country" THEN Country
    WHEN Breakdown Selection Parameter = "Device Category" THEN Device Category
END

Field: Breakdown selection

What does it do: Used in report selection.
Field name: Breakdown Selection 2
Field ID: calc_bzh70t6mhd

Formula:

case
    when REGEXP_CONTAINS(Breakdown Selection 2, "[Qq]uery") then Query - (Use)
    when  REGEXP_CONTAINS(Breakdown Selection 2, "[Pp]age") then Landing Page (No Domain) - (Use)
end

Field: Category

What does it do? A breakdown of your site into sections.
Field Name: Category
Field ID: calc_1e15yjtmgd

Formula:

CASE
  WHEN REGEXP_CONTAINS(Landing Page, '/products/') THEN 'Product Page'
  WHEN REGEXP_CONTAINS(Landing Page, '/categories/') THEN 'Category Page'
  WHEN REGEXP_CONTAINS(Landing Page, '/content/') THEN 'Content Page'
  ELSE 'Other Page'
END

This one you’re going to want to personalise to your own site sections. The format is:

CASE
WHEN REGEXP_CONTAINS(Landing Page, 'match URL pattern') THEN 'Template'
ELSE 'Other Page'
END

# If regex is giving you issues then you can use contains format:

CASE
WHEN Landing Page LIKE '%{url pattern goes here}%' THEN 'Template'
ELSE 'Other Page'
END

Date (Day/Week)

What does it do? Lets you switch between days and weeks.
Field Name: Date (Day/Week)
Field ID: calc_zisau5h6gd

Formula:

if(Daily or Weekly Breakdown= "daily", Date, date(Week))

Date (Month)

What does it do? We use with targets that exist at a monthly level.
Field Name: Date (Month)
Field ID: calc_mg554qhhhd
Formula:
```
DATETIME_TRUNC(Date, MONTH)
```

Intent Categorisation

What does it do? A very basic intent categorisation. You probbly want to customise this for your region.
Field Name: Intent Categorisation
Field ID: calc_cc5wty4chd

Formula:

case
    when (regexp_contains(Query, r"(?i)\b(what|who|why|where|how|guide|template|idea|example|learn|tutorial|question|definition|meaning|how to|diy)\b"))
    then "Informational"
    when (regexp_contains(Query, r"(?i)\b(best|top|review|color|comparison)\b"))
    then "Commercial"
    when (regexp_contains(Query, r"(?i)(price|buy|coupon|cheap|discount|free|purchase|order|deal|sale|offer|promo|shop)"))
    then "Transactional"
    else "Other"
end

is_branded

What does it do? Let’s you filter to branded traffic.
Field Name: is_branded
Field ID: calc_3slug9l6gd

Formula:

case
    when REGEXP_CONTAINS(Query, "piped ?out") then "branded"
    else "non-branded"
end

Landing Page (No Domain) - (Use)

What does it do?: In order to anonimise our dashboard, we do some regex replaces. You're going to want to change the formula to what we have below and replace the domain.
Field Name: Landing Page (No Domain) - (Use)
Field ID: calc_xfobjd3dhd

Formula:

REPLACE(Landing Page,"https://www.pipedout.com","")

Metric Selection 1 - Box

What does it do?: We use to show you which metrics are selected
Field Name: Metric Selection 1 - Box
Field ID: calc_b6b120wpgd
Formula:
```
Metric Selection 1 Parameter
```

Query (Use)

What does it do?: In order to anonimise our dashboard, we do some regex replaces. In this case we just want to set it to this. The if 'hack' is necessary to make the report copy nicely.
Field Name: Week
Field ID: calc_e8lzmj3dhd
Formula:
```
IF(true, Query, null)
```

Week

What does it do? We use this to show you weeks starting on Mondays.
Field Name: Week
Field ID: calc_ta0lq6h6gd
Formula:
```
DATETIME_TRUNC(Date, ISOWEEK)
```

Metric Selection 1

What does it do? We use this to let you switch between metrics.
Field Name: Metric Selection 1
Field ID: calc_u175ntwpgd

Formula:

CASE
WHEN Metric Selection 1 Parameter = 'Clicks' THEN Url Clicks
WHEN Metric Selection 1 Parameter = 'Impressions' THEN Impressions
WHEN Metric Selection 1 Parameter = 'CTR' THEN URL CTR
WHEN Metric Selection 1 Parameter = 'Avg. Rank' THEN Average Position
END

Metric Selection 2

What does it do? We use this to let you switch between metrics.
Field Name: Metric Selection 2
Field ID: calc_1fi6hlzpgd

Formula:

CASE 
WHEN Metric Selection 2 Parameter = 'Clicks' THEN Url Clicks
WHEN Metric Selection 2 Parameter = 'Impressions' THEN Impressions
WHEN Metric Selection 2 Parameter = 'CTR' THEN URL CTR
WHEN Metric Selection 2 Parameter = 'Avg. Rank' THEN Average Position
END

Metric Selection 3

What does it do? We use this to let you switch between metrics.
Field Name: Metric Selection 3
Field ID: calc_uznjcmzpgd

Formula:

CASE 
WHEN Metric Selection 3 Parameter = 'Clicks' THEN Url Clicks
WHEN Metric Selection 3 Parameter  = 'Impressions' THEN Impressions
WHEN Metric Selection 3 Parameter  = 'CTR' THEN URL CTR
WHEN Metric Selection 3 Parameter  = 'Avg. Rank' THEN Average Position
END

4. Do you care about targets?

If you don’t care about targets:

You can just copy with the existing sheet and delete the targets page which won’t work properly.

If you do care about targets:

Time to make a copy of the targets Google Sheet.

You’re obviously going to want to alter the targets to match something sensible for your own website.

5. Finally time to make a copy of the report

Hoorah we’re here!

Time to actually make a copy of the report.

copy dashboard

If you’ve done everything correctly you’ll be able to see your data source you’ve created and named somewhere in this dropdown.

If you don’t see it, then you’re going to need to go back and check you’ve made all the parameters and fields which need to be added.

6. Are you seeing any things fail?

If you’re seeing graphs which haven’t copied over properly, that’s because you didn’t set the ID on the field, so you’ll need to go back and check the IDs of your fields in this blog post against the ones you created.

7. Is your site very large?

Get in touch with us, we can make you an even better report! But also if your site is very large these graphs on page 1 will probably never load.

rank graphs

In that case you'll want to:

[Edit] > [Page] > [Manage Pages]

In the menu on the right hand side, unhide the large site version of the performance over time page and use that instead (you can just delete the other page).

It performs a bit better with larger sites, where LS can't handle the blend.

rank graphs

7. Off to the races

Hoorah! Hopefully now you’re up and running with the dashboard and start going. We've got a full tutorial on the dashboard at the end of the set-up video above.

8. Limitations

This dashboard isn't perfect. The default connector lacks a lot of functionality, which we expand on with data warehouse and pipelining.

You can see our equivalent data warehouse version of this report here.

Features

Revenue/conversions
More than 16 months data
More advanced segments like "pages which drive 50/80/90% of revenue/traffic"
Faster dashboard
3 - 4 times more SC data.
Better period comparison control
Better metrics for examining the data.

If you'd like better reporting for your team, please get in touch!

By Dominic Woodman -- I'm the founder of Piped Out and have never loved 3rd person bio's.