How to Get Unsampled Data in Google Data Studio

Data Studio offers a connector to Google Analytics. So why would anyone need anything other than Google’s own native connector?  One reason is that there’s still data sampling.

That’s right, Data Studio uses the same Google Analytics APIs and therefore has the same sampling behavior as the Google Analytics web interface.  While Data Studio supports higher sampling rates for Analytics 360 users, they will still experience sampling in their reports when those limits are exceeded.

This tutorial will show you how to create unsampled data sets from one or more Google Analytics accounts using Analytics Canvas and publish them for use in Data Studio.

1. Open Analytics Canvas and apply your license key (you only need to do this once)
2. Go to New Source > Google Analytics > Reporting API V4

• NOTE: Analytics 360 Customers can use the Reporting API V4, the Unsampled Reports API, or BigQuery to get their unsampled GA data 

3. Select from one or more Google Analytics Views to include in your report:

4. Dial in your query, selecting the dimensions, metrics, segments, filters, and meta-data required for your reports. (For more information check out this tutorial and how-to make a Google Analytics query in Analytics Canvas)
5. On the Sampling tab, keep all of the default settings.  If you are an Analytics 360 user and you know your data will be sampled even after partitioning, select the option to use Resource Quota and Canvas will do so if required:

Once your query has completed and the unsampled data has loaded to your Canvas, it’s a good time to do some data preparation. Canvas has all the tools you'll need to profile, clean, blend and otherwise prepare your data for analysis. 

6. Data must get into Data Studio either through a Native data connector or a through a Community data connector that is accessible in Google Data Studio. Canvas supports the following 6 ways to get your data into Google Data Studio: 
   • Our own Data Studio community connector
   • Exporting to Google Sheets
   • Loading data into Google BigQuery
   • Loading data into any cloud accessible MySQL database
   • Loading data into any cloud accessible PostgreSQL database
   • Manually uploading a CSV file

   Detailed and easy-to-follow instructions for each of these options, as well as the respective utility and limitations of each, can be found in our guide 6 Ways to Get Data From SQL Server Into Google Data Studio. In short, once you have your data ready, simply go to the Block Library and under Export Blocks select and configure one of the above mentioned exports.

7. Once you have configured your export, simply run the Canvas to publish the dataset.

Now it's over to you to visualize your data in Google Data Studio, and create the reports that you want!

If you’re having trouble finding your data to view in Data Studio, here’s a quick guide on How to View Your Data in Google Data Studio.

For further support, from FAQs to individualized training using Analytics Canvas with Google Data Studio, feel free to take advantage of our legendary support team.