How to Connect Google Analytics to Tableau Cloud

Getting your Google Analytics data into Tableau Cloud unlocks a new level of visualization and analysis that goes far beyond the standard reports. Combining Tableau’s powerful capabilities with your website data allows you to build completely custom dashboards and uncover deeper insights. This tutorial will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, from making the initial connection to sharing your first report.

Why Connect Google Analytics to Tableau?

You might be wondering why you’d go through the trouble when Google Analytics (GA) already has its own dashboards. The primary reason is to break free from the limitations of the GA interface. While GA is great for running standard reports, Tableau gives you creative and analytical freedom.

With a direct connection, you can:

• Create Custom Visualizations: Build advanced charts, interactive maps, and unique dashboards that are tailored to your specific business KPIs. You're not stuck with the default visuals available in GA.
• Combine Data Sources: What if you want to see your Google Analytics session data alongside sales data from Salesforce or advertising spend from Facebook Ads? Tableau is the central hub where you can blend these disparate data sources to get a complete picture of your customer journey and marketing ROI.
• Perform Deeper Analysis: Use Tableau’s powerful features like calculated fields, custom groups, and advanced filtering to slice and dice your GA data in ways that are difficult or impossible within the native platform. You can calculate custom metrics like cost per acquisition on the fly by blending ad spend and conversion data.
• Automate & Share Reports: Once your dashboard is built in Tableau Cloud, you can schedule it to refresh automatically. You can also securely share interactive dashboards with stakeholders who don’t have - or need - access to your full Google Analytics account.

Before You Begin: Prerequisites

To ensure a smooth connection process, make sure you have the following ready to go:

• A Tableau Cloud Account: This guide is specifically for Tableau Cloud (the hosted version of Tableau Server). The steps for Tableau Desktop are nearly identical, but the initial login process differs.
• Google Analytics Access: You need at least "Viewer" permissions for the Google Analytics property you want to connect to. To be safe, having "Editor" or "Administrator" access is ideal to avoid any permission-related hitches.
• Sign-in Credentials: Know the Google account email and password associated with the GA property you want to access.

Connecting Google Analytics to Your Tableau Cloud Environment

Ready to make the connection? Follow these steps carefully. The process is straightforward and relies on a built-in connector.

Step 1: Navigate to the Connect to Data Screen

First, log in to your Tableau Cloud account. Once you are in, click the blue "New" button and select "Workbook" from the dropdown menu. This will open the workbook editor and take you directly to the "Connect to Data" screen.

On this screen, you’ll see a list of popular data connectors. You can also view a more comprehensive list by clicking the "Connectors" tab.

Step 2: Select the Google Analytics Connector

In the list of connectors, find and click on "Google Analytics."

You may be prompted with a pop-up window from Tableau asking for your permission to connect to your Google account. This is a standard OAuth (authentication) request.

Step 3: Authenticate with Your Google Account

A new browser window or tab will open, prompting you to sign into your Google account. Enter the email and password for the account that has access to the Google Analytics property you want to use.

After you sign in, Google will show you a consent screen detailing what permissions Tableau is requesting. These permissions are necessary for Tableau to read your GA data. Click "Allow" to proceed. Once authenticated, the pop-up window will close, and you'll be returned to Tableau Cloud.

Step 4: Select Your Analytics Account, Property, and View/Stream

After a successful connection, Tableau will display a connection dialog where you'll specify which data to pull. This is a critical step, and the options you see will depend on whether you are using Google Analytics 4 or the older Universal Analytics (UA).

• Account: Choose the Google Analytics account that contains your website data from the dropdown menu.
• Property: Next, select the specific Property you want to analyze.
• Profile (View) or Data Stream:

Quick Tip: It’s important to select the correct and most relevant view or data stream. Many organizations have multiple, such as a "Raw Data" view and a "Filtered View" that excludes internal traffic. Make sure you select the clean, filtered data for your analysis.

Step 5: Define Your Date Range and Segments

Below the account selection, you have two optional but highly useful settings:

• Date Range: Choose a default date range for the data you want to import. You can select presets like "Last 30 days" or define a custom range. Don't worry, you can always change this or override it with filters within your Tableau dashboard later.
• Segments: Segments allow you to import a pre-filtered subset of your data. For instance, you could choose to only import data from "Organic Traffic" or "Mobile Traffic." These must be pre-configured in your Google Analytics account to appear here. For a first-time connection, leaving this at "All Users" is usually best.

Once you’ve made your selections, click the blue "Connect" button in the bottom-right corner.

Step 6: You're Connected! Explore the Data Source Page

That's it! If all went well, you are now on the Data Source page in Tableau. Here, you'll see a preview of the tables, dimensions, and metrics available from your Google Analytics account.

You can see available fields categorized into folders like "User," "Session," "Platform / Device," etc., on the left-hand panel. You can now join this with other data sources or click on "Sheet 1" at the bottom to start building your first visualization.

Building Your First Viz with GA Data

Now that the connection is in place, you can start building reports. Tableau works on a drag-and-drop principle with Dimensions (categorical data like 'Country', 'Source') and Measures (numerical data like 'Sessions', 'Users', 'Pageviews').

Let's create a simple line chart showing sessions over time:

1. Navigate to your worksheet (e.g., "Sheet 1").
2. In the "Data" pane on the left, find the Date dimension. Drag it onto the Columns shelf at the top of the canvas.
3. Next, find the Sessions measure. Drag it onto the Rows shelf.

Tableau will automatically generate a line chart showing your total sessions for each day in your selected date range. From here, you can drag the Source / Medium dimension onto the "Color" mark to see which channels are driving the most traffic over time. The possibilities are endless.

Tips for Working with Google Analytics Data in Tableau

To get the most out of this connection, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

Use a Data Extract for Better Performance

By default, Tableau uses a live connection. This means every time you change a filter, Tableau queries the Google Analytics API, which can be slow. For faster performance, create an "Extract." An extract is a saved snapshot of your data stored within Tableau's high-performance engine.

On the Data Source page, simply switch the "Connection" setting from Live to Extract. You can then schedule this extract to refresh on a daily or weekly basis so your data stays up to date without sacrificing dashboard performance.

Understand Potential Data Sampling

If you have a very high-traffic website and are requesting data over a long period, Google Analytics may provide sampled data to speed up the API response. Tableau will display a notification ("Data from Google Analytics is sampled") if this occurs. To avoid this, either shorten your date range or create multiple data sources with shorter ranges and stitch them together in Tableau.

Create Calculated Fields for Custom Metrics

One of Tableau's most powerful features is the ability to create new data fields from existing ones. For example, Google Analytics gives you 'Sessions' and 'Transactions', but what if you want to see 'Conversion Rate'? You can create a calculated field with a simple formula like:

SUM([Transactions]) / SUM([Sessions])

Now you can use "Conversion Rate" in your charts just like any other native GA metric.

Final Thoughts

Connecting Google Analytics to Tableau Cloud is a fast and effective way to elevate your marketing and website analytics. By moving your GA data into a more flexible visualization tool, you can build dashboards that answer deeper questions, show your true marketing ROI by blending data sources, and automate your reporting cadence.

While powerful, setting all of this up and building dashboards from scratch still takes time and technical know-how. That’s actually why we built Graphed . We wanted to make it incredibly easy to connect all your data sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Facebook Ads - and get answers without the complex setup. With Graphed, you can use plain English to ask questions like "create a dashboard showing my top traffic sources and their conversion rates from GA for last month," and we build the real-time dashboard for you in seconds, no drag-and-drop required.