Both Ads and Analytics have their strengths but you can only see their true benefits once you have linked the two.
Linking Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts lets you analyze actions your customers make after seeing your ad or clicking on it. It also provides valuable insights into your ad strategy as a whole.
Checklist before you start:
- First of all, you will need Administrative access to Google Ads account as well as Edit permission to an Analytics account;
- Editing and canceling the existing linking requires Administrative access to Google Ads only;
- If you have problems linking accounts, feel free to use Google Troubleshooter.
How to link Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts:
- First, log in to your Google Ads account, click Tools, choose the Setup column and click Linked accounts.
- In Google Analytics select Details and you’ll see all the properties that you have access to. In the Status column, you can see if a property is already connected to Ads or not. If you can’t see the property you’re looking for, make sure you have Edit permission to it.
- Go to the Action column, select the desired properties and click Link. The amount of properties isn’t limited so you can choose as many of them as you need.
- After following the steps outlined above, you should see the following screens:
- The name of the view if there is only one view for this resource. Click «Import site metrics» to see any Analytics data in the Ads reports.
- The list of views you can link (if there are more than one). Choose the appropriate action for each of them. There are two options:
- Click Link. In this case, Google Ads information about click and cost will be available in Google Analytics. Analytics goals and transactions will be available in Ads as well. Feel free to link as many views as you need.
- Click Import site metrics. After selecting one view, site engagement metrics will be imported and will be shown in Google Analytics reports. It’s important to note that you will have to add Analytics columns to your Ads reports.
- Click Save after you completed all steps.
How to edit or remove linked Analytics properties
- First of all, log in to your Google Ads account, click Tools, choose the Setup column and click Linked accounts.
- In Google Analytics select Details and you’ll see all the properties that you have access to.
- Click the pencil icon to change the linked views or to choose other views from the site metrics import and click Save.
- To unlink a property from your Ads account click Unlink in the Actions column.