How to Create Keyword Dashboards in Data Studio: A Step-by-Step Guide for PPC Pros

TL;DR: This guide walks you through how to create keyword dashboards in Data Studio (now Looker Studio) that actually help you make smarter PPC decisions. You'll connect your Google Ads data, build KPI scorecards, create conditional-formatted keyword tables, add interactive filters, visualize match type performance, and set up automated delivery—all without writing a single line of code.

Most PPC managers live in one of two places: staring at raw Google Ads tables trying to spot patterns, or exporting endless spreadsheets and manually building pivot tables every Monday morning. Neither is a great use of your time, and neither scales well when you're managing multiple accounts.

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) solves this. It's free, it connects directly to your Google Ads account, and it gives you a shareable, visual, always-live view of keyword performance. Whether you're a freelancer sending weekly reports to clients or an agency owner with a dozen accounts to manage, a well-built keyword dashboard turns a two-hour reporting session into a five-minute glance.

By the end of this guide, you'll have a fully functional keyword dashboard with live Google Ads data, scorecards for your top KPIs, a color-coded keyword performance table, interactive filters, match type visualizations, and scheduled delivery set up. No coding required. No paid tools. Just a browser and a Google account.

One quick note before we dive in: this guide assumes you have a Google Ads account with active campaigns running. If your account is brand new with no data, some steps won't have much to display yet. Also, throughout this article you'll see references to both "Data Studio" and "Looker Studio"—they're the same product. Google rebranded Data Studio to Looker Studio in October 2022, but many marketers still search using the old name, so we'll use both interchangeably.

Step 1: Connect Google Ads to Looker Studio

Head to lookerstudio.google.com and sign in with the Google account that has access to your Google Ads account. Click the Create button in the top left, then select Report. This opens a blank canvas and immediately prompts you to add a data source.

In the data source panel, scroll down and select Google Ads from the list of connectors. It's a native connector, meaning it's built in and free—no third-party integrations needed. You'll be asked to authorize access and then choose which Google Ads account to connect.

Account level vs. MCC level: If you're managing your own single account, connect directly to that account. If you're an agency owner managing multiple client accounts through a Manager Account (MCC), connect at the MCC level. This gives you cross-account reporting in a single dashboard, which is a significant workflow advantage when you're pulling keyword performance across clients. You can always filter down to individual accounts using a data control (more on that in Step 4).

Once connected, you'll see a field selection panel. By default, Looker Studio pulls in a broad set of fields. For a keyword dashboard, make sure these are available in your data source:

Dimensions: Keyword, Campaign, Ad Group, Match Type

Metrics: Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Cost, Conversions, Cost per Conversion

One important limitation to flag here: the native Google Ads connector does not pull search term report data. It shows you the keywords you're bidding on, but not the actual search queries that triggered your ads. For search term analysis, you'll need to export that data to Google Sheets and blend it as a second data source—we'll cover that workaround in Step 5. If you need help pulling keyword data programmatically, check out how to integrate keyword data via API for more advanced setups.

After connecting, Looker Studio will drop a default table onto your canvas. Don't worry about what it looks like yet. The key thing to verify is that you're seeing real, recent data. Check that campaign names match what you see in Google Ads, and that the numbers look roughly right for a recent date range. If the table shows zeros or nothing at all, double-check that you connected the correct account and that your default date range isn't set to a period before your campaigns started running.

Success indicator: You see a table with live keyword data from your Google Ads account inside the Looker Studio canvas. Campaign names are recognizable, and the numbers are in the right ballpark.

Step 2: Design Your Dashboard Layout Before You Build

Before you start dragging charts around, spend five minutes planning your layout. In most accounts I audit, the biggest dashboard mistake isn't the data—it's the structure. People dump everything onto one page with no hierarchy, and the result is a wall of numbers that nobody actually reads.

A layout that works well for keyword dashboards follows a simple three-row structure:

Top row: KPI Scorecards. Total spend, total conversions, average CPC, and overall CTR. These are the four numbers you check first every time you open the dashboard. Scorecards give you the headline at a glance before you dig into anything else. Understanding how to benchmark keyword CPC vs industry average can help you set meaningful thresholds for these scorecards.

Middle section: Charts. This is where your match type breakdowns, trend lines, and performance comparisons live. Visual charts help you spot patterns across time or across segments that tables miss.

Bottom section: Detailed tables. Keyword-level data with all the metrics. This is where you do the actual analysis—sorting, filtering, looking for outliers.

For canvas size, a width of around 1200px works well for most screen-sharing scenarios and client presentations. You can adjust this under File > Report Settings > Canvas Size.

On design: keep it clean. Use two or three consistent colors maximum. If you're building this for a client, add their logo in the top corner—it takes thirty seconds and makes the report feel intentional rather than like a default export. Use a light background with dark text for readability.

The most important design decision, though, is deciding which questions your dashboard needs to answer. The two questions I come back to every week are: Which keywords are eating budget without converting? and Which match types are actually performing? Build your dashboard around answering those specific questions, and resist the urge to add every available metric. More data isn't more insight—it's more noise.

CTR and match type performance are particularly worth centering your layout around. A keyword with high impressions and low CTR is telling you something about ad relevance or audience intent. A match type breakdown showing that broad match is consuming most of your budget deserves a prominent visual position. We'll build both of these in the steps ahead.

Step 3: Build Keyword Performance Tables with Conditional Formatting

This is the core of your keyword dashboard—the table that tells you where your money is going and whether it's working.

Click Add a chart in the toolbar and select Table. In the data panel on the right, set your dimensions and metrics:

Dimensions: Keyword, Match Type, Campaign, Ad Group

Metrics: Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Cost, Conversions, Cost/Conv

Once the table populates, sort it by Cost descending. This is the single most useful default sort for a keyword table. The keywords spending the most money appear at the top, which is exactly where you want your attention to start. In most accounts, the top 10-15 keywords by spend tell you most of the story. If you're still building out your keyword lists, our guide on how to find the best keywords for PPC can help you identify the right terms to bid on.

Now let's add conditional formatting to make the table actually useful at a glance. Click on the table to select it, then look for the Style tab in the right panel. Scroll down to find the conditional formatting options for each metric column.

For Cost/Conv: apply a color scale where high values (expensive conversions) shade toward red and low values (cheap conversions) shade toward green. This immediately surfaces your worst and best performers without any manual sorting.

For CTR: apply a reverse scale—high CTR in green, low CTR in red. A keyword with low CTR is either poorly matched to your ad copy or attracting the wrong intent.

The result is a table where you can scan down the rows and the color coding does the analysis for you. Red in the Cost/Conv column means "look here first." Green means "protect this."

Now here's a feature that most beginners skip: calculated fields. You can create a custom metric called "Wasted Spend" that flags keywords burning budget with zero results. In your data source, click Add a field and create a calculated field using a CASE statement like this:

CASE WHEN Conversions = 0 AND Cost > 50 THEN Cost ELSE 0 END

Adjust the cost threshold to whatever makes sense for your account—$50 might be too low for a high-ticket B2B campaign and too high for a low-margin e-commerce account. Once this field exists, add it as a column in your table. Now you have a column that shows exactly how much money each zero-conversion keyword has consumed. Knowing how to prioritize keywords by ROI potential will help you decide which of those underperformers to pause versus optimize.

Success indicator: A color-coded table sorted by spend where you can identify your top budget consumers and flag zero-conversion keywords within thirty seconds of opening the dashboard.

Step 4: Add Interactive Filters and Date Range Controls

A static report is better than a spreadsheet. An interactive report is better than a static report. Adding filters transforms your dashboard from something you read into something you explore.

Start with a date range control. Click Add a control in the toolbar and select Date range control. Place it in the top right of your dashboard. This lets anyone viewing the report toggle between last 7 days, last 30 days, last quarter, or a custom range—without needing to edit the report or ask you for a new export.

Next, add drop-down list controls for Campaign, Ad Group, and Match Type. Each one takes about thirty seconds to set up: click Add a control > Drop-down list, then set the dimension to the field you want to filter by. Place these controls in a row near the top of the dashboard, just below your scorecards. For a deeper dive into filtering strategies, our guide on how to refine keyword lists with filters covers the principles behind effective data segmentation.

It's worth understanding the difference between two types of controls in Looker Studio. Filter controls narrow the data that's already in your report—so a Campaign filter shows only the rows matching the selected campaign. Data controls can switch between entirely different data sources, which is useful if you're building an agency dashboard where a client can toggle between their own accounts. For most single-account dashboards, filter controls are all you need.

For agencies specifically: adding a campaign-level filter means clients can self-serve their own reporting. Instead of you pulling a custom export every time someone asks "how did Brand keywords perform last month?", the client can answer that question themselves in thirty seconds. That's real time back in your week.

One pitfall I see constantly: too many filters. If you add eight drop-down controls across the top of a client dashboard, non-technical clients get overwhelmed and stop using it. Keep it to three or four controls maximum. Date range, Campaign, and Match Type covers the vast majority of what anyone actually needs to filter by.

Step 5: Visualize Match Type and Search Term Performance

Match type analysis has become more critical over the past few years. Since Google retired broad match modifier in 2021 and has continued expanding what broad match can trigger, it's entirely possible for a broad match keyword to drive a huge volume of irrelevant traffic if you're not watching it. A match type visualization makes this visible immediately. If you need a refresher on how each type works, our guide on how to understand keyword match types breaks it all down.

Add a donut chart to your dashboard. Set the dimension to Match Type and the metric to Cost. This gives you an instant visual of how your budget is distributed across broad, phrase, and exact match. In many accounts, this chart is the first thing that prompts a real conversation—"Wait, 70% of our spend is on broad match? Let's look at what that's actually triggering."

Alongside the donut chart, add a bar chart with Match Type on the X axis and two metrics: Conversions and Cost. Use a combo chart if you want to show both on the same visual with different scales. This answers the question: is broad match driving volume that converts, or is it just burning budget? If broad match shows high cost and low conversions compared to exact match, that's your signal to tighten up. You can learn more about testing this systematically in our article on how to run A/B tests on keyword match types.

Now, for search term data. The native Google Ads connector doesn't include actual search queries—it only shows the keywords you're bidding on. To get search term data into your dashboard, you have two practical options:

Option 1: Google Sheets workaround. Export your search terms report from Google Ads into a Google Sheet, then add that sheet as a second data source in Looker Studio. Use the Data blending feature to join it with your keyword data on a shared dimension like Campaign or Ad Group. This isn't perfectly automated, but it works well for weekly reporting workflows.

Option 2: BigQuery. If you have Google Ads data flowing into BigQuery (available through Google Ads data transfer in BigQuery), you can connect Looker Studio directly to BigQuery and query search term data in real time. This is the more robust solution for agencies with large accounts, but it requires some BigQuery setup.

Even without search term data blended in, the match type visualization alone gives you a strong signal about where to look. If broad match is eating budget, you know to go into Google Ads and pull the search terms report to find what's triggering it.

Success indicator: A donut chart and bar chart that together answer "Where is my budget going by match type, and is it producing conversions worth the cost?" within five seconds of looking at the dashboard.

Step 6: Schedule Delivery and Share with Your Team or Clients

You've built the dashboard. Now make sure it actually gets used.

Looker Studio has a built-in scheduled email delivery feature. Click Share in the top right, then select Schedule delivery. You can choose the frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly), the time of delivery, and the recipients. For keyword reviews, weekly delivery on Monday morning works well—it lands in the client's inbox before the week starts and gives them a snapshot of last week's performance.

For sharing permissions, keep it simple: clients get Viewer access (they can explore filters and date ranges but can't edit the report structure), and team members who need to update the dashboard get Editor access. Avoid giving clients Editor access unless they specifically ask for it—accidental edits to a shared report are a common support headache.

If you have a client portal or internal wiki, use the Embed feature to drop the dashboard directly into a page. Under File > Embed report, Looker Studio generates an iframe code you can paste into any web page. This is cleaner than sending a link every week and keeps reporting centralized.

The biggest time-saver for agency owners: build a template version of your dashboard. Once you have a clean, well-structured keyword dashboard, duplicate it (File > Make a copy) and strip out the account-specific data source connection. When you onboard a new client, duplicate the template, reconnect to their Google Ads account, and you're done in minutes instead of hours. If you're scaling across many accounts, learning how to scale keyword lists across campaigns will complement your templated reporting workflow nicely.

One thing worth saying directly: dashboards show you what's happening, but they don't fix anything on their own. A dashboard that surfaces wasted spend on irrelevant search terms is only valuable if you then go and negative those terms. If your dashboard reveals problematic queries, our guide on how to create a negative keyword list walks you through the next step. The reporting workflow and the optimization workflow need to work together.

Your Keyword Dashboard Checklist and Next Steps

Before you call this dashboard done, run through this quick checklist:

1. Google Ads connected to Looker Studio at the right account level (single account or MCC)

2. KPI scorecards at the top: total spend, total conversions, average CPC, overall CTR

3. Keyword performance table with conditional formatting, sorted by cost descending

4. Calculated "Wasted Spend" field showing cost on zero-conversion keywords

5. Interactive filters for Campaign, Match Type, and Date Range

6. Match type donut chart and bar chart showing spend and conversions by match type

7. Scheduled weekly delivery set up and sharing permissions configured

The real value of a keyword dashboard in Data Studio isn't the charts—it's the speed at which you spot problems and act on them. A good dashboard cuts your Monday morning review from an hour to ten minutes. It makes the conversation with a client concrete: here's what's working, here's what isn't, here's what we're doing about it.

But the dashboard is step one. Step two is actually executing the fixes: negating the irrelevant search terms, tightening match types on keywords that are triggering the wrong queries, promoting high-intent terms to exact match. That's where the real optimization happens, and it's where a lot of time gets lost switching between tools, exporting lists, and manually making changes in the Google Ads interface.

If you want to close that loop faster, Start your free 7-day trial of Keywordme. It's a Chrome extension that lives directly inside your Google Ads search terms report, letting you remove junk search terms, build negative keyword lists, and apply match types with a single click—without leaving the platform or opening a spreadsheet. Pair it with your Looker Studio dashboard and you've got a complete workflow: spot the issue in the dashboard, fix it in Google Ads in seconds. At $12/month after the trial, it's one of the lowest-friction upgrades you can make to your PPC workflow.