Blending Google Ads & Google Search Console via Google Data Studio

Blending Google Search Console & Google Ads data sources

You’ve now reached the next stage, which is actually blending the two data sources together. All we’ve done so far is add the data sources to Google Data Studio. Blending is the fun bit!

So what is blending you ask?

A relatively new feature, the Google Data Studio team describes this as the following:

You create a blended data source by joining the records in one data source to the records of up to 4 other data sources. To join the data, each data source in the blend must share a set of one or more dimensions, known as a join key.

The key aspect here is the term “join key” which the GDS team have gone so far as to add italics to those words in their documentation. We need to find a shared/common aspect between the data sets and join them together – this is the join key essentially.

To start off with, we need to actually blend our two data sources that we have together.

Step 1: Manage blended data

In the report you’ve got, you’ll need to find the ‘Manage blended data’ page. It is located up in the menu at the top under the menu ‘Resource’:

This will take you to the screenshot in step 2.

Step 2: Adding Google Search Console & Google Ads

Click on ‘ADD A DATA VIEW‘:

Add Google Search Console:

It’s important to add the Google Search Console account to the very most left of the report as we’re doing a LEFT JOIN so that all records on the most left data source is matched with the records in the right data source. You can obviously switch these around if you think you are able to get more out of Google Ads being on the left side rather than the right side.

Add Google Ads:

Add in the your Google Ads data that you either already had in Google Data Studio, or you when you followed my tutorial above in adding Google Ads data to Google Data Studio:

You’ll then get to the stage where you’ll see both data sources in this view: 

You’ll see the ‘Join keys’ sections in both data sources and the option to ‘Add dimension[s]’ – not to be confused with the ‘Dimensions’ function below the Join Keys section.

Step 3: Adding the Join Keys, Metrics & Blend Name

I’ve marked the graphic below with an a), b) and c) to make this part easier to explain.

a) Join Keys: as I’ve explained in the graphic below, the Join Keys are the common elements between the two data sources. In Google Search Console & Google Ads, the common Join Keys where essentially the data is the same are the ‘Query’ (GSC) and ‘Search Term’ (Google Ads) dimensions, and ‘Date’ (GSC) and ‘Day’ (Google Ads), which is why I’ve added them below as the common Join Keys.

b) Metrics: Once the above Join Keys are setup, you can go to town and add everything you would like to add basically in terms of metrics. You’ll then be able to visualise them based on Query and Date range (Join Keys) in the Data Studio report itself. Re-name your metrics: you should re-name the metrics by clicking on where it says ‘AUT’, and I’ve done this and renamed the default Google Search Console names to highlight the fact that it is “SEO” and equally have done that to the one metric I’ve added on the PPC side called ‘PPC Clicks’, instead of simply ‘Clicks.

c) Blend name: You’ll want to give your blend as much of a descriptive name as possible, so that you don’t mix anything up and your blend(s) are easy to find. I’ve simply named this ‘PPC & SEO Blend’ as you can see in the image below:

I thought it would be smart to explain the rationale as to why we’ve picked these Dimensions for the Join Keys. You can see that rationale below:

Definitions of our Join Keys:

CASE
WHEN Device = "computers" THEN "DESKTOP"
WHEN Device = "mobile devices with full browsers" THEN "MOBILE"
WHEN Device = "tablets with full browsers" THEN "TABLET"
ELSE "OTHER"
END

CASE
WHEN Device = "computers" THEN "DESKTOP"
WHEN Device = "mobile devices with full browsers" THEN "MOBILE"
WHEN Device = "tablets with full browsers" THEN "TABLET"
ELSE "OTHER"
END