Google rolls out free Data Studio globally, improves filters & other features

Google has now rolled out the free version of its reporting tool, Data Studio, globally and made several improvements to the tool, including filters and analytics segments.

More dimensions and metrics are available from existing data connectors, such as AdWords campaign ID and keyword quality score, YouTube video title and DoubleClick Campaign Manager revenue and cross-environment conversions.

Analytics segments

A welcome change is the added ability to select segments built in Google Analytics (GA) when building visualizations in Data Studio. All segments are now available in Data Studio, including system, custom and shared segments.

System segments are available automatically; you’ll need to add custom and shared segments in reports in order to use them.

Segments can be applied to one or several charts, a page or an entire report. Segments update automatically when changes are made in Analytics, though you can turn segment syncing off from the Resources > Segments menu.

Filters

If you’ve grown weary of having to create and recreate the same filters for multiple metrics in your Data Studio reporting, Google has heard you. The analytics team has kindly added the ability to save and reuse filters in your reports in a new filter interface. You can also now use AND and OR filter conditions in one filter and filter by value, including greater than, less than or specified ranges.

New filter interface in Google Data Studio

Data imports and uploads

Users can now upload up to 2GB of CSV data, rather than having to rely on SQL or Google databases.

Google Data Studio also integrates with BigQuery and now supports Standard SQL in BigQuery. Google adds that the integration between Data Studio and Google Cloud Platform is now tighter, providing more functionality and faster reporting.

Last month, Google lifted the limit of five reports in the free version of Data Studio and added a connector to Google Search Console.