A recent and very welcome addition to Google Data Studio was option to use Filled Area Google Maps. Previously we were able to use filled area Geo Maps or Bubble Google Maps.

In this post I’ll just give a quick overview over some of the ways you can use these new filled area maps.

To get a better understanding of what’s possible and not possible with Google Maps in Data Studio I’d recommend reading up on the official Google Maps reference.

For this example I also used the Extract Data connector as I’ve had issues with displaying cities using the conventional Google Analytics connector.

Filled Area Map with Colour based on Dimension

As with Bubble Google Maps you can use a dimension to colour each location on a map.

Below is a map showing Country with the colour based on country.

In the data tab on the right in the image below you can see how the map is set up.

Filled Area Map with showing Region by Metric

The next major geographic data type you can use to display data is the Region. This is particularly useful for countries where it makes more sense to view data by region than simply country. An example is the US and Canada with very large provinces and states. With filled area maps its now much easier to get a sense of regional variances across countries than before.

To create this type of map simply use a Region dimensions with any metric. In the map below we can see that England has by far the most sessions out of any other region in Europe.

Filled Area map showing Towns and Cities by Metric

To me the most exciting new feature of the Filled Maps is the ability to view data by City. This can also include suburbs or towns.

The map below shows Toronto and surrounding small cities, suburbs and towns. While a bubble map could also show us this data by location this view helps us match the size of the geographic area to the value of the metric.

Sometimes not all suburbs within a city are visible as separate geographic region. For example Cape Town shows the entire City of Cape Town metropolitan area as one area on the map.

This type of map is set up the same way as the regional map, just using a City geographic type (not Lat, Long or Address) for the cities. If the data from the Google Analytics connector doesn’t work then use the Extract Data connector.

A Live Data Studio with three types of Filled Area Maps

In the embedded Data Studio report below you can view and interact with each of the reports I’ve mentioned above.

You will need to open the report in Google Data Studio itself to interact properly with the maps.

My Other Blog Posts

I hope you found this useful and interesting. You can check out some of my other blog posts below.