🚨 Note: All standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. 360 Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on October 1, 2023. That’s why it is recommended to do the GA4 migration.
Google Ads and Google Analytics are both powerful marketing tools on their own—but what if you could get the best of both worlds by connecting them?
Yes, you can link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account to track the behavior of users that landed on your website from your ads!
In this guide, you’ll learn why you should link Google Ads to Google Analytics, how to do it, and how to make sense of the collected data.
An overview of what we’ll cover:
- Why connect your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts?
- Login with the same email address on both accounts
- Check that you have the right account permissions
- Link your accounts together
- Looking at live data
So let’s start!
Why Connect Your Google Ads and Google Analytics Accounts?
Linking your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account has two major benefits that you wouldn’t be able to leverage from these tools separately.
Observe the Behavior of Google Ad Traffic
Firstly, you’ll be able to track the behavior of the users that visit your website from a Google Ad.
Google Ads gives you information on the number of impressions or clicks on your ads. But after a user clicks on the ad, how do they behave on your site?
For example, did the user visits other pages on the website? Or did they leave immediately? Are they more likely to convert than users who arrived from other sources?
You can answer all of these questions by importing Google Analytics metrics like Bounce Rate, Pages/Session, and Average Session Duration into your Google Ads account.
Thus, linking these two accounts extends your ability to track traffic and user behavior. It also tells you about the quality of traffic that you’re buying with Google Ads.
Google Analytics Retargeting Audience
Secondly, you can retarget an audience from your Google Analytics account using Google Ads.
For example, if you have an audience of users who did not bounce from your website, they’re more likely to engage with a targeted ad. Thus, you might target fewer people with your ads, but those ads will be highly focused and have higher chances of converting.
Depending on your requirements, you can create different types of audiences in Google Analytics and target them using Google Ads.
Apart from this, you can also import Analytics goals and Ecommerce transactions into your Google Ads account for better goal tracking. Similarly, you can import cross-device conversions into your Google Ads account when you activate Google signals.
So let’s see how to connect these accounts!
Log In with the Same Email Address on Both Accounts
We’ll start by logging into both of our accounts.
🚨 Note: Make sure you are logged in with the same email address on your Google Ads account that you are logged in with your Google Analytics account.
First, find your Google Ads email address at the top right-hand side of the screen.
Click on the Profile icon to find your Google Analytics email address.
Your Google Analytics email address will be found under your account name.
Next, we’ll need to check whether we have the correct account permissions set for connecting.
Check That You Have the Right Account Permissions
One major thing we need to take care of is to grant correct permissions.
Let’s see how!
Google Ads Permissions
On the Google Ads platform, click on the Tools icon.
Under Setup, click on Account access.
Then, check your access under Access level. You need to have Admin access level set up with your email address.
Google Analytics Permissions
Go over to the Admin section at the lower left-hand side of the platform.
Under the Property Settings, click User Management.
Under User Management, you need to have edit access to the account.
Link Your Accounts Together
After checking your email addresses in both Google Ads and Google Analytics along with their access levels, you may now connect the accounts. Then, click on Google Ads Linking.
Check the compatibility of your Google Ads IDs.
Then, tick on the box opposite your Google Ads account ID and click Continue.
Choose and input an account name in the Link group title field. This way, if you have multiple accounts that you connect to your Google Ads account, you can determine where this is coming from.
Choose where you want to pull data from. You are allowed to choose multiple views.
Then, click on Advanced settings.
Enable auto-tagging to automatically pull data from your Google Ads account into Google Analytics.
You may also want to leave auto-tagging settings as they are, especially if you are utilizing UTM tags and you want to avoid mixing it up with the auto-tagging feature.
Click on Link accounts.
Once your accounts are linked, you will gain more advantages such as being able to see more data in both accounts, being able to import goals and eCommerce conversions, and also having the ability to build remarketing audiences of your segmentation feature in Google Analytics 4.
You may also want to try to link Google Ads and Google Analytics through Google Ads’ linking wizard.
So let’s go ahead and see how the data will look once the two accounts are linked!
Looking at Live Data
Open the homepage of your Google Analytics account. You’ll be able to see all the campaigns and reports under Acquisition → Google Ads → Campaigns.
On the top of the screen, you’ll see the sales charts. It will show the number of Users vs. Transactions report of a particular timeframe for your campaign.
Going further down on the Campaigns page, you’ll see the different metrics of your campaigns.
For example, you’ll find the Cost and Revenue in this report. You’ll also see the Ecommerce Conversion Rate, Bounce Rate, Sessions, etc. for your campaigns.
Similarly, you can analyze and compare the results of different campaigns to increase their effectiveness.
For example, the bounce rate of a smart campaign can be considered good even if it’s around 80%, but the bounce rate of a shopping campaign will be considered good only if it’s really low.
You can definitely obtain revenue-related information from your Google Ads account. But when you analyze the reports with your Google Analytics account, you can make more informed decisions as you have a holistic view of data.
Summary
So that’s all you need to know about linking your Google Analytics account with your Google Ads account.
Not only will you be able to observe the user traffic closely but you’ll also have the power to retarget your customers and ads by linking the two accounts. You’ll be able to drive quality traffic to your website and eventually save your company more on ad spend.
Have you started doing keyword research for your Google Ads campaign? Check out our handy guide on how to use Google Keyword Planner for SEO keyword research.
Have you linked your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account? What are some helpful insights that you got after linking the two accounts? Let us know in the comments!
