Geo maps in Looker Studio

This is the first of several posts where we’ll explore one of the most visually appealing types of visualisation you can create in Looker Studio: maps.

For the examples, I’ll use the H&M store data.

1, Types of Maps in Looker Studio

There are two types of maps available:

Geo Maps

These were the first maps available in Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) and have basic functionalities.

Google Maps

These are interactive maps that use the Google Maps platform. By leveraging this platform, users viewing the report can access many features of Google Maps, such as zooming in with great detail. These maps allow for representing lower-level locations, such as latitude and longitude coordinates.


Before diving into map details, remember that you can add any visualisations in two ways:

From the top menu, go to Insert and select the graph you’d like to work with.

From the secondary top menu, click on Add a chart and select the one that interests you.


2. Geo Maps

Geo maps work similarly to heat maps, coloring areas with higher values in different shades or tones compared to those with lower values. For example, if there are more stores in the United States than in Canada, the U.S. will be shaded in a darker blue, as shown in the example below.

Visit the post on how to add charts to your report in Looker Studio, if you need a refresher.

To create the map shown in the image, after selecting the geo map, you must configure it by choosing Country as the dimension and Record count (number of stores) as the metric. Remember, the data source is H&M stores.

This type of map allows you to break down information, moving from higher to lower geographical points, such as from country to city. This means that when the final user views the report in View mode, they’ll have the option to change the dimension they want to see the data by (country or city) in the upper part of the chart.

Configuration Steps

  • Select both Country and City as geo dimensions.
  • Activate the Drill down option.
  • Choose a default drill down level. In this case, select Country.

With the arrow in the top right corner of the map, users can choose which dimension to view (country or city) without having editing privileges.

Additional Features

Maps also allow optional metrics. As we did in the post about chart options that provide more user interaction power in Looker Studio, first activate them in Set-up, and afterward, users can switch metrics by selecting this icon in the upper right corner of the chart.

By default, the zoom area is global, but it can be focused on specific regions of the world. We’ll change it to Europe, so when the user opens the report, the map will be centered on this continent.

However, zooming beyond the country level (or state level in the U.S.) is not possible—this feature is only available with Google Maps.

In Style, you can modify the colors used to represent metrics on the map. You have the option to change the color for the minimum, medium, and maximum values.

The geo map below uses different shades of green to represent the maximum, medium, and minimum values for the number of stores metric.

In the next post, we’ll start reviewing Google Maps, beginning with the bubble map in Looker Studio.

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