How to Create Blended Data in Looker Studio

Your Google Analytics tells you how many people visited your blog, but your Google Search Console holds the data on which keywords brought them there. To connect those two dots, you need to combine your data. That's exactly where blended data in Looker Studio (now Google Data Studio) comes into play. This guide will walk you through exactly what blended data is, why it's a game-changer for your reports, and how to create your first blend step-by-step.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

What is Blended Data, Really?

Think of your data sources - Google Analytics, Google Ads, a Google Sheet with sales goals - as different ingredients for a recipe. On their own, they’re useful. Flour is a great ingredient, but it's not a cake. Blending data is the process of mixing those ingredients together to create something much more insightful, like a complete dashboard cake.

Technically, data blending combines information from multiple data sources into a single chart or table based on a shared field known as a join key. This key is the common thread that links your datasets together. For example, if you blend Google Analytics traffic data with Google Ads cost data, the join key would likely be the Date.

Here are a few common scenarios where data blending is incredibly valuable:

• Marketing Campaign ROI: Blend Google Ads cost data with Google Analytics conversion data to see exactly which campaigns are driving valuable actions and which are just burning cash.
• Content Performance Analysis: Blend Google Search Console query data with Google Analytics landing page data to see which keywords are driving the most engaged traffic to specific blog posts.
• Sales vs. Marketing Goals: Blend actual sales data from a Google Sheet with marketing campaign data from different ad platforms to see how your activities translate directly into revenue.
• E-commerce Funnel Analysis: Blend Shopify product data with Google Analytics behavioral data to understand how user behavior on different pages leads to sales of specific products.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Before You Blend: The Secret is the Join Key

Before you even click the "Blend Data" button, the success of your report depends entirely on one thing: a usable join key. This is the dimension that exists in every data source you want to combine. It acts like a unique identifier to match rows from one table to another.

Common join keys for marketers include:

• Date: The universal key for almost all time-series analysis.
• Campaign Name/ID: Essential for linking cost data from ads platforms with behavior or conversion data from analytics.
• Source / Medium: Great for connecting high-level channel performance to more granular outcomes.
• Product Name / SKU: The go-to for e-commerce reporting, connecting inventory or profit data to website behavior.
• Landing Page URL: Perfect for blending SEO data (like clicks from Search Console) with on-page engagement (like bounce rate from Analytics).

Heads up: Your join keys must match perfectly in format and spelling. Looker Studio treats "Facebook" and "facebook" as two different things. Likewise, a date formatted as "Dec 1, 2023" in one source won’t match with "2023-12-01" in another. Ensure your data is clean and consistent before you try to blend it.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your First Data Blend

Alright, let's build something. For this example, we’ll create a simple but powerful table showing performance across two sources: Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads. Our goal is to see Sessions (from GA4) right next to Cost and Clicks (from Google Ads), broken down by date.

Step 1: Start with a Single Data Source

First, create a new table or chart in your Looker Studio report. For its data source, select your primary source. In our case, let's start with our Google Analytics 4 data and add Sessions as a metric and Date as the dimension.

Step 2: Find the 'Blend Data' Button

With your table selected, look at the Data Panel on the right-hand side. Directly under your data source's name, you'll see a button that says "Blend Data." Click it.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Step 3: Add Your Next Data Source

This opens the data blending interface. Your first data source is already there on the left. Click "Join another table" and select your second data source from the list - in this case, Google Ads.

Step 4: Configure the Join Condition (The Key!)

This is the most critical step. Looker Studio will try to guess the join key, but it's often wrong. You need to tell it exactly how to connect these two tables.

Click "Configure join." In the middle column that appears, you’ll define the relationship.

1. On the left table, select Date.
2. On the right table (Google Ads), also select Date.

This tells Looker Studio: "For every date in my GA4 data, find the matching date in my Google Ads data."

Step 5: Add All Your Dimensions & Metrics

Now, build your combined dataset. From the GA4 table, drag the Date dimension and the Sessions metric into your reporting columns. From the Google Ads table, drag the Clicks and Cost metrics over.


Your setup should now show one Dimension (Date) and three Metrics (Sessions, Clicks, Cost) pulled from your two sources.

Step 6: Choose Your Join Type

Between the two data tables, you'll see an icon representing the "join operator." Hovering over it reveals five options. Don't let this overwhelm you! For 95% of marketing reports, you'll only ever need one.

• Left Outer Join (The default and most common): This says, "Show me every single row from my left table, and bring in any matching data you can find from the right table (Google Ads)." If there was an ad spend on a day with zero sessions, that day wouldn't show up. This is perfect for most analytics use cases where the website traffic source is your primary frame of reference.
• Inner Join: This says, "Only show me rows that have a match in both tables." In our example, it would only show dates where there were both website sessions and ad spend. This can be useful for finding clean overlap but can also exclude important data.
• Right Outer Join: The opposite of a left join. Shows everything from the right table, only matching data from the left.
• Full Outer Join: Shows all records from both tables, regardless of whether a match exists.
• Cross Join: A complex join that multiplies every row from the left with every row from the right. Avoid this one unless you have a very specific, advanced use case.

For our report, we’ll stick with the default: Left Outer Join.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Step 7: Save and Use Your Blended Data

Give your blended data source a descriptive name at the top (e.g., "GA4 + Ads - Blended by Date"), then click "Save."

You'll be taken back to your report, and your chart will now be powered by this brand-new, combined data source. Voila! You can now see sessions, clicks, and cost all in one place, perfectly aligned by date.

Data Blending Tips and Common Pitfalls

Once you get the hang of it, data blending feels like a superpower. But here are a few tips to avoid common frustrations.

• Name Your Blends Clearly: Looker Studio's default name, "Blended Data (2)," is useless when you're managing multiple projects. Be specific! SourceA_SourceB_Blended_by_Key makes it easy to remember what's inside.
• Beware of Mismatched Totals: If your join is configured incorrectly, your metrics might be wildly inaccurate. Always spot-check a few days of data directly in the native platforms (e.g., check totals in Google Ads UI vs. your blended chart) to make sure everything adds up correctly.
• Understand 'Null' Values: If you see "null" in a metric from your second data source, it simply means there was no matching data for that join key. For our example, a 'null' Cost on Jan 5th means there was GA4 organic traffic data for that day, but you didn’t spend any money on Google Ads on that specific date. It's not an error, it's an insight.
• Limit of 5 Sources: Looker Studio allows you to blend a maximum of five data sources in a single blend. This is sufficient for most needs but good to keep in mind.

Final Thoughts

Blending data in Looker Studio is an essential skill for moving beyond surface-level reporting. It allows you to combine disparate datasets to tell a complete story about a campaign's ROI or a customer’s journey. While the process requires careful attention to your join keys and configuration, mastering it unlocks a much deeper level of analysis.

Of course, this whole process involves manually connecting sources, figuring out the right join keys, and clicking through several detailed setup menus just to answer one question. That’s why we built Graphed. We connect directly to all your platforms - Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads, Salesforce - in one place. Instead of spending 30 minutes in a blending menu, you can just ask a question in plain English like, "Show me a chart of my Facebook Ads cost vs Shopify revenue by day for last month," and get a live, interactive dashboard in seconds. Our goal is to give you the powerful insights without the tedious setup.