Web Analytics

How to Set Up Automatic Google Analytics Reports in Google Spreadsheets

In 2013, we published How to Create Auto-Updated Google Analytics Reports in Google Docs. The process of creating Google Analytics reports in Google Sheets is now much more user-friendly, thanks to the official Google Analytics Add-on. This Add-on connects your Google Analytics accounts to Google Sheets, allowing you to automatically import Google Analytics data into a spreadsheet where you can do any kind of analysis you can imagine.

This tutorial will walk you through creating an automatically-updated Google Analytics report using the new Add-on. To start, you will need a Google account with access to Google Drive and Google Analytics.

1. Install the Google Analytics Add-on

You can quickly install the Google Analytics Add-on in a few clicks:

  1. Follow this link to the Add-ons store.
  2. Click the button “Free” in the upper right to install the add-on for free.
  3. Click “Accept” when the Add-on requests permissions to view and manage your spreadsheets in Google Drive and to view your Google Analytics data.
Google Analytics Add-on

Once your Add-on is installed, it will automatically open up a new spreadsheet. Click on the default “Untitled Spreadsheet” to rename the document.

2. Configure reports with the Google Analytics Add-on.

The Google Analytics Add-on has a user-friendly interface that makes creating reports self-explanatory. 

  1. Click “Add-ons” from the Google Sheet menu bar. 
  2. Select “Google Analytics” > “Create new report”.
Create new report

This will open a “Create a new report” tool to the right of your spreadsheet. Create a new report toolFill in the options to create a new report:

  1. Name Your Report: choose a name that describes the type of report you want to make. The report results will be saved in a sheet with this name.
  2. Select Account Information: select the Account, Property, and View on which you want to report.
  3. Choose Metrics and Dimensions: pick which combination of metrics and dimensions to use in the report.  There are links provided to the Metrics and Dimensions Explorer if you need to look up which ones are available in Google Analytics. A good working knowledge of Google Analytics is helpful in creating meaningful reports.
  4. Click “Create Report”.
Create a new report form

The Add-on will create a “Report Configuration” sheet, and will put the options you selected in the steps above into it.  Google Analytics experts can also manually edit the “Report Configuration” to change the timeframe of reports, to add sorting options, filters, to add segments, or other advanced options.  See the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on reference to view all available options.

Report configuration

To make a full analysis of your Google Analytics data, you may need to create many reports. You can manually edit the configuration or use the “Create new report” tool as many times as you need to create multiple reports.

3. Run reports to get Google Analytics data.

After your reports are configured, you must run the reports to get the results from Google Analytics.

  1. Click “Add-ons” from the Google Sheet menu bar. 
  2. Select “Google Analytics” > “Run reports”.

The Add-on will create a new sheet for each report and will give it the report name provided in the Report Configuration.

Report results sheet

4. Schedule reports to run automatically.

This step is optional: you can run reports whenever you choose by using the process described in step 3 above. If you want your reports to run automatically, enable the report schedule.

  1. Click “Add-ons” from the Google Sheet menu bar. 
  2. Select “Google Analytics” > “Schedule reports”.
  3. Check the box, “Enable reports to run automatically.”.
  4. Select the frequency you want reports to run: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.
  5. Select the time of day the report should run.
Schedule reports

5. Create tables and visualizations to help you understand Google Analytics data.

The reports that the Google Analytics Add-on creates help you get Google Analytics data into Google Sheets, but they are not very pretty. To really understand the Google Analytics data in your reports, you should create tables and charts that breakdown and visualize this data.Sessions by Medium pie chartThe Google Analytics Add-on makes getting Google Analytics data into a Google Spreadsheet easy. Once you set it up, you can use all the power of Google Sheets to perform your own analyses and visualizations.