In this blog post, I want to summarize the new releases from the Google tools, that we use daily in datadice. Therefore I want to give an overview of the new features of BigQuery, Looker Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Furthermore, I will focus on the releases that I consider to be the most important ones and I will also name some other changes that were made.

If you want to take a closer look, here you can find the Release Notes from BigQuery, Looker Studio, Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager.

BigQuery

Partner Centre

Google added a new BigQuery Partner Centre to the Frontend.

When you take a look inside, you see tools and services which can interact with BigQuery. Google is also differentiating here between “Featured” and “Google Cloud-ready” tools. The services can be:

• Data Ingesting tools (e.g. Fivetran)
• Data Transformation tools (e.g. Dataprep by Trifacta)
• Machine Learning tools (e.g. Tamr)
• And many more‍

When you click on one of the services, you get the most important information about them and how to start with it.

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Looker Studio

Looker Connector

I think you already realized, that Data Studio is called Looker Studio now :). If not, or if you want to have more information about it, you can check this post. Google wants to bring its two main visualizations closer together, the former Data Studio and Looker.‍

Looker Studio got the Looker connector now. With this connector, you can add data that is located in Looker to your LS dashboard. But you can not add data that is customer-hosted or hosted not in the Google Cloud.

‍The account that connects the data needs at least explore permissions in Looker. You just have to type in the Looker Instance URL (the URL you also use to access Looker) and then a quick authentication and you can use your Looker data in your Looker Studio dashboard.‍

Cloud SQL private IP Connection

This feature is already available since 15.December 2023 for BigQuery ( Post). You can now use a private connection to your Cloud SQL (MySQL) instance, to improve on the security side.‍

Before you can start with that, you have to enable it in the new/existing Cloud SQL instance.

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Google Analytics

New dimensions and metrics

GA4 still gets new available dimensions and metrics. This time the focus was on more e-commerce and items fields.

The new fields are available in Explorations and the Data API:

• Item affiliation
• Item variant
• Items added to cart
• Items checked out
• Items clicked in list
• Items clicked in promotion
• Items viewed
• Items viewed in list
• Items viewed in promotion
• Shipping amount
• Shipping tier
• Tax amount‍

Additionally, some metrics were renamed (e.g Item list clicks to Item-list clicks or Item purchase quantity to Item purchased).

More search functionalities

Google added a lot of defined keywords you can use to navigate through your properties. So you have to type in the search bar the following keywords to get the desired output.

• “Tracking”, Webstream measurement ID or App stream ID > Detail page for web or app data stream
• “Property”, property ID or property name > Property Settings
• “Account”, account ID or account name > Account Settings‍

You can even switch to another property when you search e.g. for the property ID, property name, or web stream measurement ID.

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Google Tag Manager

No further release for the Google Tag Manager.

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Further Links

This post is part of the Google Data Analytics series from datadice and explains to you every month the newest features in BigQuery, Data Studio, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

We also started with our own YouTube channel. We talk about important DWH, BigQuery, Data Studio and many more topics. Check out the channel here.‍

If you want to learn more about how to use Google Data Studio and take it to the next level in combination with BigQuery, check our Udemy course here.

If you are looking for help to set up a modern and cost-efficient data warehouse or analytical dashboards, send us an email to hello@datadice.io and we will schedule a call.

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