Filters and blended data in Looker Studio. Why do I like Windsor.ai?

Data blending is a process of combining data from multiple data sources into a single dataset within a report. In my blog I’ve already published a lot of articles about blended data, so you can have an idea about data blending joins, performing blending based on different data sources and for different purposes.

In this article, I would like to share with you how you can use filters (controls) with blended data. 

But firstly, check out the video tutorial:

Adding controls

Let’s add a drop-down list type of control from the top menu to the dashboard. As a control field I chose the Device category in this case. It will be a perfect example, because this field is present in both Google Search Console and Google Analytics datasets. Consequently, let’s select Google Search Console as a data source for our first control.

By this example, let’s create one more control but based on Google Analytics, so that we could compare data from two data sources. 

This way, the filters work in a quite weird way. 

Let’s add one more control based on blended data GSC and GA4. 

When we apply this blended filter to the dashboard, it affects only the blended table and tables for Google Analytics and Google Search Console remain as they were. 

Moreover, if we select only Mobile from the device category list, in our blended table we see only the data from Google Search Console and we get null in the fields from Google Analytics. Even if we apply the IFNULL formula, it is not a big deal, won’t help much. 

Fixing the issues

As you may have noticed, the data in Google Search Console is presented in uppercase and in Google Analytics – in lowercase. That prevents us from synchronizing the data, because data blending is sensitive to the case. 

What do we do now?

First of all, we need to open the blended data settings. 

Then, let’s make adjustments to the Device category field in the GA4 table by adding a custom formula – UPPER (Device Category).

After this, we need to go back to our blended table and change the formula for the Device dimension – IFNULL(Device Category (GSC),Device Category (GA4))

This way, the controls and data blending will work correctly. 

How to avoid issues with data blending?

I found a very simple and enjoyable way to work with data blending – it is Windsor.ai. All the data transformations and blended data setup happens in Windsor.ai website and not in your dashboard – in the end you will connect just one data source with blended data. 

One of the templates in my online store is actually based on the Windsor.ai connector which allowed me to perform data blending without any struggle – it is called Paid Ads template using Windsor.ai connector. 

Summary

Hope this article about filters and blended data in Looker Studio was useful for you. Share your impressions in the comments!