[MUSIC PLAYING]
RICK ELLIOTT: Hi, everyone.
I'm Rick Elliott, tech writer on Data Studio.
RICCARDO MUTI: And I'm Riccardo Muti.
I'm a product manager on Data Studio.
RICK ELLIOTT: So we're coming at you today from our home offices
to show you how you can visualize your data in a Google
map inside a Data Studio report.
So Riccardo, with all that's going on in the world
these days, people have been spending
a lot of time looking at maps.
And obviously, a lot of people are
really familiar with Google Maps for getting
driving directions and such.
What is it about bringing a Google
map into Data Studio that is so powerful for our customers?
RICCARDO MUTI: Well, with Data Studio,
we want to help you visualize your data
and break it down along different dimensions.
And two sort of universal dimensions
that are present in almost all data are the when the where,
so date and time, and geographic location.
And one natural way of visualizing the where
is on a map.
So the existing geomap visualization that we have,
it's essentially a set of static maps.
So if the map that you need is one of those maps, you're good.
But we've heard from a lot of users
where, well, I don't have a map of this part of the world,
or I wish I could zoom in more.
It's not that interactive.
I can't pan and zoom.
So these are problems that are naturally
solved by Google Maps, where they've
mapped every corner of the world in detail.
It's highly interactive.
We're all using it.
We're all familiar with it.
There is no training needed.
So it just felt like this belongs in Data Studio.
RICK ELLIOTT: That sounds really great.
How about giving us a demo?
RICCARDO MUTI: Yeah, absolutely.
Let's do that.
So here I've got a report that's connected to our Google
Merchandise Store demo account.
And we've got these merchandise stores across the US.
And we want to get people to come and visit these stores.
So we're running a set of local search ads,
and we want to see where those search
ads are working at getting people to come into the store.
So on the left, I've got my ad spending by state.
And on the right, I've got the cities where I've got stores.
And this works well at the national level.
I can see where my stores are.
But suppose I wanted to focus on California.
If I click California, it'll filter to California,
but it doesn't actually zoom in.
And there's no way for me as a report viewer to zoom in.
And further, what if I wanted to focus on the Bay Area?
I do have this little in set here,
but I really wish I could just properly zoom in and get
a map of the Bay Area.
So let's upgrade this report with a Google map.
I'm going to click the Edit button here, go into Edit mode,
and just like other charts in Data Studio,
I can start with my geomap if you already have one
and easily convert to a Google map in one click.
Or even if you had a non-map, like a table or a chart,
you can convert that to a Google map
if you've got a geographic dimension.
But just to show you how easy it is to start from scratch,
I'm just going to delete this map,
and go Add a Chart, just like any other type
of visualization.
And let's choose a Google Map.
And just insert one.
And with no configuration, it's going
to find a geographic dimension in my data, and plot a map.
So here it shows state, so I'm getting
one bubble for each state in which I have a merchandise
store.
I actually want to see the individual store locations, so
let me just grab the address field,
and I'm going to drag and drop that in, and plot one
bubble for each store address.
RICK ELLIOTT: So Riccardo, you can plot addresses
without using latitude and longitude?
RICCARDO MUTI: You can now.
So previously, you could only go down to the city level,
but now if you have addresses, we will actually
search for them using Google Maps,
just like as if you had typed those addresses into Google
Maps.
The difference being that it would probably
take you a long time to search for hundreds
or thousands of addresses, whereas we
can do it in a split second.
We can also plot postal codes or zip codes now.
So here I've got my store locations,
and it's just showing the location itself
without any additional information.
So that's not super interesting.
Let's make it more interesting by visualizing
some metrics for those stores.
So I can actually visualize two different metrics,
one represented by the bubble size, and one by the color.
So let's visualize the store visits, number of store
visits using the bubble size.
And let's visualize the amount that I'm spending
on ads for each store visit.
So basically my return on ad spend, my cost per store visit
using color.
And I want to really highlight those stores where
I'm spending the most money for each store visit,
so the least efficient store ads, and color those red.
And right away I get to see some red bubbles
that I'm going to want to drill into it later.
Just like other charts in Data Studio,
if I wanted to restrict the date period,
if I wanted to add a filter and see only certain stores,
I can do that.
If it was Google Analytics data, and I
wanted to look at a particular segment, I could do that.
One thing here I'll do before we go
into interacting with this report is just
enable this imply filter mode, where now this map can actually
act as a filter as well.
So I can click bubbles in the map and cross
filter these metrics and these visualizations on the page.
So let's go interact with this report.
I'll click View.
And now let's say that I wanted to focus on California.
It will not only filter by California,
but automatically zoom me into a map of my stores in California.
And if I want to focus on the Bay Area,
I can manually pan and zoom around,
just like I'm used to doing in Google Maps itself.
And here I can see, because I've applied that filter mode,
I can click the San Francisco store
and see that a pretty typical cost per store visit
is $0.78 per store visit.
I want to see that under $1.
When I go click on San Jose, I can see that that is almost $2
that I'm spending per store basis.
So that might not be a good return.
I might want to look at what's going on with that ad
or maybe optimize that ad.
RICK ELLIOTT: That's very cool.
So Riccardo, that map has a kind of different look
and feel than the typical Google Map
I might see you from looking for driving directions.
What kind of control do we have over the look and behavior
of a Google Map in Data Studio?
RICCARDO MUTI: Yeah, you have a lot of control.
So we use this sort of gray scale
map to make it so that your data is more visible,
but if you prefer a different style, we have lots of options.
And it's integrated with report theming.
So for example, if I preferred a dark report theme
to light report theme, the report
will actually automatically change
to using a dark map style, which is pretty cool.
I'll just switch this back.
If you go into the map and go to the Style tab,
you'll see the full set of options available to you.
So let's say you did want that more traditional Google Map
style, like when you go to maps.google.com,
you certainly have that style available to you.
You've got satellite imagery that you can turn on.
If you didn't want to see labels for like the United
States and the individual states,
you could just dial those down or turn them off completely.
So a lot of control over the look and feel.
If you wanted to really, really customize it at a fine grain,
there's actually tools to be able to fully customize the map
style, and then you can copy the JSON from there
and paste it in here, so it's extremely flexible.
And beyond the look and feel, you
can actually customize the behavior
as well, or the interactivity.
So normally you'd want your users
to be able to pan and zoom, but let's say
you didn't want them to be able to do
that, you can turn that off.
And if you didn't want users to be
able to go into full screen view or go into Street View,
you can turn that off as well.
RICK ELLIOTT: Wait a minute.
Did you say Street View.
You can use Street View in a Google Map in Data Studio?
RICCARDO MUTI: Yeah, you can.
So let me show you that.
I'll just go to the report.
Let's look at Washington state this time.
So in Washington state, all of our stores are in the Seattle--
greater Seattle area.
So it's automatically zoomed in there for me.
And I might want to look at what's
going on with this red bubble in Seattle.
I'll just zoom into that neighborhood there.
I can drag my little peg man, and say, like,
what does the store look like, what does the neighborhood look
like, if I'm not familiar with it.
You can even go into full screen mode, so it's really immersive.
Get a sense for what this building looks like.
These are actually Google offices.
So this is one of our newest offices in Seattle.
It looks like an urban area.
RICK ELLIOTT: Riccardo, I don't actually
believe that that's Seattle.
What was that bright thing up in the sky?
RICCARDO MUTI: Yes, so my Californian colleagues,
Rick among them, like to tease me
that there's no sun in Seattle, but I present to you
photo evidence.
RICK ELLIOTT: That was an impressive demo.
So our customers already know that Data Studio
is a pretty powerful data visualization tool,
but with adding Google Maps and interactivity in Street View,
it's almost like we're building an application platform.
What are you and the team working on next?
RICCARDO MUTI: Well, one thing we'd like to add
is suppose that instead of seeing bubbles plotted
on the map, you wanted to see shaded regions,
so maybe you'd see Washington state in one, shade
and California in a different shade
depending on the value of some metric like cost per store
visit.
That's one thing that we're starting to work on
and would like to add.
RICK ELLIOTT: Go it so that's the choropleth map, right?
RICCARDO MUTI: Yeah, exactly.
And maybe if you're viewing this video in the future,
that's something that you might already see.
RICK ELLIOTT: Riccardo, thanks so much for that demo.
This is really exciting stuff.
So that's how easy it is to visualize your data using
Google Maps in Data Studio.
You can learn more and give us feedback by visiting the help
center at support.google.com/datastudio.