Looker Studio reads your Google reviews through a Google Sheet. Reviewflowz creates the sheet in your Google Drive and keeps it current, and Looker Studio reads it with its built-in Google Sheets connector. You set it up once, and the dashboard stays live without a download or an upload.
A new review reaches the sheet within about 30 minutes. Looker Studio refreshes a Google Sheets source every 15 minutes by default, so the dashboard trails Reviewflowz by under an hour. Every plan includes the sync. There is nothing to install and no API key to copy.
This is the live version of an export. For a file you download once, see how to export your reviews to CSV or Excel.
What you need
A Reviewflowz account with your Google reviews already in it.
A Google account that can create files in Google Drive. Use the same Google account in Looker Studio.
Access to Looker Studio at lookerstudio.google.com.
Step 1. Connect Google Sheets in Reviewflowz
In Reviewflowz, open Integrations and select the Forward Reviews tab. Add an alert, or open an existing one.
Next to To, select Google Sheets, then click Connect Google Sheets.
Sign in with Google and approve access to your Drive. Reviewflowz creates one new spreadsheet in your Drive, named Reviewflowz Integration followed by the date, and brings you back to the alert.
Under To, pick that spreadsheet.
Step 2. Choose which reviews go in the sheet
Pick the reviews the dashboard should cover, because the sheet holds only what the alert holds.
Choose the Locations or Account wide listings to send. Each one becomes a Profile Name in the sheet, which is how you split a dashboard by location later.
Clear Review must contain some words if you want star-only ratings in the sheet. Your average rating needs them.
Step 3. Turn the sync on and send past reviews
Switch the alert from Inactive to active.
Reviewflowz asks whether to seed the spreadsheet with past data. Choose to send all past reviews, and the sheet fills with your history.
Click Open Spreadsheet to check it.
Sending past reviews is locked during a free trial. Subscribe to send them.
What the sheet looks like
Reviewflowz writes to one tab, named Reviews. The first row is the header, and every row after it is one review.
Column | What it holds |
Review ID | Reviewflowz's own ID. Keep it, because the sync finds each row by it |
Profile Name, Platform | The listing and the site it came from |
Title, Overall, Pros, Cons | The review text |
Score | The star rating as a number |
Review Date | The date of the review |
Link | The review on its platform |
Language, Reviewer Name | Who wrote it and in which language |
Tags, Review Owners | Your tags and the team member the review is attributed to |
External Review ID | The ID the platform uses |
The sheet has more columns than this, up to External Review ID. New reviews insert at the top. Edits that Reviewflowz detects are sent to the sheet, and a review deleted from Reviewflowz, for example when you remove its listing, loses its row.
Treat the tab as read only. Reviewflowz rewrites it as reviews change, and new rows push everything down. Do your calculations in Looker Studio, not in extra columns in the sheet.
Step 4. Connect the sheet to Looker Studio
These steps happen in Looker Studio, so there is no screenshot from Reviewflowz.
In Looker Studio, click Create, then Data source.
Choose the Google Sheets connector.
Select the Reviewflowz Integration spreadsheet and its Reviews worksheet.
Keep Use first row as headers ticked, so the fields carry the column names.
Click Connect. The fields panel opens.
Check the types. Review Date should be a date and Score a number. If a field shows the wrong type, change it in the panel.
Set the credentials at the top of the panel to Owner's credentials. People who open the report then don't need access to your Drive.
Click Create report and add the data source.
Looker Studio's Google Sheets connector reads one worksheet per data source, which is why Reviewflowz keeps every review in the one Reviews tab.
Build the first charts
Start with five and add more as the questions come.
Average rating. A scorecard on the average of Score.
Review volume. A time series with Review Date on the axis and a count of Review ID.
Rating by location. A bar chart by Profile Name with the average of Score.
Source mix. A pie or bar chart by Platform, once you send more than Google.
Latest reviews. A table with Review Date, Profile Name, Score, Title and Link, sorted by date.
Add a date range control and a Profile Name filter control on top, and one report serves every location. Reviewflowz has a page on Google reviews in Looker Studio by location that shows a finished one.
A second route on Premium
On a Premium plan, the Data Sync tab under Integrations lists Looker Studio next to Power BI and Tableau. That route reads Reviewflowz's OData feed instead of a sheet. To connect Power BI or Tableau the same way, see how to connect Google reviews to Power BI and Tableau. Looker Studio has no built-in OData connector, so you add a partner OData connector from its Connect to data gallery, paste the feed URL as the service root and the token as the username, and leave the password blank. The Google Sheets route in this article needs no partner connector and works on every plan. To work in the sheet itself instead of a dashboard, see how to sync Google reviews to Google Sheets automatically.
Keep it fresh
Two clocks run in sequence.
Reviewflowz checks for changes every 30 minutes and writes any it finds to the sheet.
Looker Studio refreshes a Google Sheets source every 15 minutes by default. You can set it to 1, 4 or 12 hours in the data source's freshness settings.
To see a new review sooner, open the report, click More options, then Refresh data. Looker Studio allows one refresh a minute.
If the columns in the sheet ever change, open the data source in Looker Studio and refresh its fields.
Reviewflowz keeps a Google Sheet of your Google reviews current in your own Drive, with changes written every 30 minutes. Looker Studio reads that sheet, so the dashboard updates with no export step. Start a free trial to connect your first listing, and see the Looker Studio page for a finished example.