I have a field in our database that has the “latitude, longitude” in one field and the field works fine with Bubble Maps and Heat Maps. When I try to use the field with Combo Maps, I get the error “Combo Map Require the Location Dimension to Be Set to A Geo Type”, even though the field is set to Geo type “Latitude, Longitude”.
What am I missing? Again, the field works fine with Bubble and Heat Maps, but Combo Maps throws a wobbly.
As per Troubleshooting Combo Chart error with Lat/Long fields... | Looker Studio Masterclass it seems Looker does not like Latitude and Longitude on Combo Maps. We ultimately went with the physical address (street, city, state zip) and the Combo Map worked after that.
Glad you got it working, and thanks for posting the fix — for anyone who finds this later, here’s the why:
The Bubble Map and Heat Map (filled) layers in Looker Studio use Google’s standard mapping, which plots raw `Latitude, Longitude` points directly. The **Combo Map** (the Google Maps-based geo chart with multiple layers) expects a location that maps to a defined geographic *boundary or place* — i.e. an address, city, region, country, or other named geo type it can geocode — rather than a single lat/long coordinate. So even though your field is correctly typed as `Latitude, Longitude`, that geo subtype isn’t one the Combo Map accepts, which is why it throws the “must be set to a Geo type” error despite working fine on the point-based maps.
Switching to the physical address (street/city/state/zip) is exactly the right fix, since that’s a geocodable geo type. The other option, if you only have coordinates, is to keep using Bubble/Heat maps for those, or geocode the lat/long into a region/address upstream in your data source. Marking your own reply as the solution will help others hit the same wall find it faster.