The speed with which a Looker Studio report loads and responds to viewer changes, such as applying filters or changing the date range, depends on a number of factors, which include the following:
- the performance of the underlying dataset
- the amount of data that is being queried by the visualizations in the report
- the complexity of those queries
- network latency
Some of these factors are beyond your (or Looker Studio's) ability to control. For example, there may not be much you can do to improve the responsiveness of the underlying data platform or speed up your network connection. There are, however, some things that you can do to fine-tune your report performance in Looker Studio.
Adjust the data freshness rate
Most data source types have a data freshness option (the exception to this is extracted data sources). This option lets you balance your need for up-to-date information against report performance and potential query costs or quotas. Each type of data source has its own default data freshness threshold, but you can adjust this threshold as needed. For example, if you are measuring ad performance on your site or app, you might find that daily data updates are sufficient. Reports that are based on social media analytics, on the other hand, may need their data updated multiple times a day.
Learn more about managing data freshness.
Use an extracted data source
An extracted data source is a static snapshot of up to 100 MB of data. Once created, data requests from your report go to this snapshot, not to the underlying dataset. Using an extracted data source can make your reports and explorations load faster and be more responsive than when working with a live connection to your data.
Extracted data sources don't have a data freshness option. Instead, you can schedule when you want to the data in the extracted data source to update.
Learn more about extracting data.
Accelerate BigQuery data sources with BI Engine
BigQuery BI Engine is a fast, in-memory analysis service. By using BI Engine you can analyze data stored in BigQuery with sub-second query response time and with high concurrency.
BI Engine integrates with Looker Studio to accelerate data exploration and analysis. With BI Engine, you can build rich, interactive dashboards and reports in Looker Studio without compromising performance, scale, security, or data freshness.
Get started using Looker Studio with BI Engine.