The Looker Studio Dashboard Build Checklist

Go to lookerstudio.google.com and sign in. If you manage multiple Google accounts, confirm the account in the top-right corner matches the one that owns your GA4 property and Ads account. Mismatched accounts are the number one cause of broken data sources.

Click Create, then Blank Report. Templates sound helpful but they hardcode chart types and layouts you will spend hours undoing. Start clean and build exactly what you need.

Click Untitled Report at the top left and give it a name such as "[Your Business] Marketing Dashboard." Naming it now means the file saves correctly from the start and is easy to find later.

When the data source prompt appears, select Google Analytics from the connector list. Looker Studio will show you every GA4 property your account has access to. Select the correct property and click Add.

In Resource, then Manage Added Data Sources, click Edit on your GA4 source. Set the default date range to Last 28 Days. This gives you a rolling window that updates automatically every day without you touching anything.

In the data source editor, scroll through the available fields. Confirm Sessions, Active Users, Engaged Sessions, Engagement Rate and Conversions all appear. If Conversions shows as 0, your GA4 conversion events may not be configured yet, which is a separate fix before this dashboard will be meaningful.

From the Insert menu, choose Date Range Control. Place it at the top of your report. This lets you or a client change the time window for the whole dashboard with one click, without touching any individual chart.

Go to Resource, then Add a Data Source. Select the Google Search Console connector. Choose your verified property from the dropdown. You will see two table options: Site Impression and URL Impression. Add the Site Impression table first.

Repeat the process and add URL Impression as a second Search Console source. Site Impression gives you totals by query. URL Impression gives you performance by individual page. You need both to see the full picture.

In each Search Console source, verify these four metrics appear in the field list. Average Position is a dimension in some connector versions, a metric in others. Either works as long as you can add it to a chart.

Add a small text note on your dashboard that reads "Search Console data reflects up to 3 days ago." This stops you or a client from worrying that today and yesterday show blank Search Console rows. It is expected behaviour, not a broken connection.

Go to Resource, then Add a Data Source, then select Google Ads. Choose your account or MCC account. Select the Campaigns table to start. This gives you spend, impressions, clicks and conversions by campaign automatically.

When building your Google Ads charts, use these five fields consistently. They give you a clear performance summary without noise. Add Average CPC as a sixth field if you are monitoring bid efficiency.

In Meta Ads Manager, set up a custom report with Spend, Reach, Impressions, Clicks, CPM, CPC and Conversions. Schedule it to email to your inbox weekly or export it manually each Monday. Paste it into a dedicated Google Sheet and connect that Sheet to Looker Studio using the Google Sheets connector. The data will not auto-update unless you use a third-party connector, but a weekly refresh is enough for most businesses.

LinkedIn does not have a native Looker Studio connector. Export your Campaign Manager performance report as CSV each Monday, paste it into a dedicated Google Sheet tab labelled LinkedIn Ads, and connect that tab separately. Label your data source clearly inside Looker Studio so you do not confuse it with Meta data.

Use the Blend Data function in Looker Studio to combine your Google Ads spend and your Meta Ads spend into one total spend row. This lets you see total ad spend in a single scorecard at the top of the page. Use Date as the join key.

Add four scorecards: Total Sessions (GA4), Total Clicks from Search (Search Console), Total Ad Spend (Google Ads or blended), and Total Conversions (GA4). These four numbers give you the 10-second executive read. Make them large and easy to scan.

Use GA4 as the data source. Set the time dimension to Date and the metric to Sessions. Add Engaged Sessions as a comparison line in a lighter colour. This shows you whether traffic quality is moving with volume.

Create a new page and name it SEO. Add a table using the Site Impression source with Query as the dimension and Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Average Position as columns. Add a second table using the URL Impression source with Landing Page as the dimension and the same four columns. Sort both by Clicks descending. These two tables show you exactly which searches and pages are driving organic traffic.

Use the URL Impression source. Set the dimension to Landing Page, X-axis to Average Position, Y-axis to CTR. This immediately shows you pages with good position but low CTR, meaning the title or meta description is not compelling enough and is the first thing to fix for quick organic gains.

Create a page named Ads. For Google Ads, add a table with Campaign Name, Spend, Clicks, Conversions and Cost per Conversion. Add a bar chart of Spend by Campaign for a visual spend split. If you have Meta data in Sheets, add the same table structure below with a clear header row labelled Meta Ads. Label everything so there is no ambiguity about which platform each section covers.

Add a pie chart or bar chart of Sessions by Default Channel Group from GA4. Add a geo map using Country or Region as the dimension and Sessions as the metric. This tells you whether your audience mix is shifting and whether paid is cannibalising organic rather than adding to it.

From Insert, choose Filter Control. Set it to the Session Default Channel Group field from GA4. Place it next to your date range control at the top of page 1. This lets you or a client isolate organic, paid, email or direct traffic with one click across all GA4 charts on that page.

In Theme and Layout, set your primary chart colour to your brand colour. Use a neutral grey for comparison lines. Avoid red for anything other than a genuine alert metric, because clients read red as bad performance even when it is just a comparison line.

Change chart titles from auto-generated field names such as "Sessions" to descriptive labels such as "Website Traffic This Month (Sessions)." A client reading the dashboard for the first time should not have to guess what they are looking at.

From Insert, choose Text. Type "Data refreshes automatically. Search Console reflects up to 3 days ago. Meta and LinkedIn data updated weekly." Place this in small text at the bottom of every page. This stops questions about whether the data is current.

Click your Conversions scorecard, open the Style tab, and set a comparison date range to the previous period. Enable the comparison metric display. The scorecard will now show a green arrow for improvement and a grey or red arrow for decline automatically, with no manual formatting needed.

Select your top row elements, right-click, and choose Lock. Locked elements cannot be dragged or deleted when someone opens the report in view mode. This protects the layout if you share the live dashboard link with a client.

Click Share at the top right. Under General Access, choose Anyone with the Link and set the role to Viewer. Copy the link and send it. The recipient does not need a Google account if you set it to public. If the data is sensitive, restrict sharing to specific email addresses instead.

The Edit link allows changes to layout, data sources and filters. Send only the view link to clients. Keep the edit link for yourself and any team members who need to update the build.

Click Share, then Schedule Email Delivery. Set it to weekly on Monday morning. Enter your email and your client's email. The PDF snapshot arrives in the inbox automatically each week, so even if the client never opens the live link, they see the numbers.

Set a recurring Monday calendar reminder to paste the latest Meta and LinkedIn CSV exports into their respective Google Sheets tabs. This is the only manual step in the whole system. Everything else updates automatically.

Open Resource, then Manage Added Data Sources, every quarter and check that all connections show as Active. GA4 and Search Console connections can break if account permissions change or if the Google account used to set them up loses access to the property. A 90-day audit catches this before it becomes a gap in your data.

If you want to test a new layout or add a new data source, click the three-dot menu and choose Make a Copy. Work on the copy. Looker Studio has no version history, so if you break the original, you cannot recover it. The copy takes 10 seconds to create and saves you hours.