How to Link Your Google Ads and Analytics Accounts

Start with checking access rights

Before linking Google Analytics and Ads, make sure you’ve got the necessary access rights: “Admin” rights for Google Ads and “Edit” rights for Analytics.

1. Log in to your Analytics account and click “Admin” in the left panel.

2. Go to “Account settings” and make sure there is a tick next to “Google products & services”.

3. Next, click on the “User management” section.

4. Add the email address used with Google Ads. After that, set the “Edit” access rights.

5. Turn on the auto-tagging in your Google Ads account. This is necessary to send the detailed data about views, clicks and their costs, placements and ad positions, from Google Ads to GA. To do that, follow these steps:

• Log in to your Ads account and find the “All campaigns” section and navigate to “Settings”. In the “Account settings” tab click on “Auto-tagging”.

  

• Put a tick next to “Tag the URL that people click through from my ad” and save the changes.

  

Now, proceed to linking GA and Google Ads accounts. Below, we describe how to do that in the interfaces of both services. Just choose the method most comfortable for you.

Link via the Google Ads interface

Google has been testing the new Google Ads interface for quite a long period of time, and the company’s planning to switch to the new version in the nearest future. That’s why we use the new Google Ads interface in our guide.

1. First, log in to your Google Ads account.
2. Next, click on “Linked accounts” under “Setup”.

   

3. Now find the “Google Analytics” card at the top left and click on “Details”.

   

4. You’ll see the list of the GA properties that you have access to.

   

5. Choose the Google Analytics property you want to link and check its status. In case you can’t find the needed property, make sure you have the appropriate access rights.

   

   Click on "Link“in the “Actions” column next to the property.

6. Now there are two possible options. In the case that your property has only one view, you’ll see the name of the view. Turn on “Import metrics” to add the data from GA to your Google Ads reports. If there are two or more views in the property, you’ll see the list of the views that can be used to link or import website metrics. Click on the “Link” option, and you’ll add the Google Ads data about clicks and costs to Analytics.

   The data will become available in the “Acquisition” reports in 24 hours after the linking.

   You can also import Analytics goals and transactions to Google Ads. Moreover, there’s no restriction on the number of linked properties. To import the goals and transactions, click on the view you want to import the data from. Next, add the behavior metrics you want to get to Google Ads, and save the changes. The metrics will be added to the Google Ads’ campaign reports in 24 hours after the linking.

   

7. For now, the Analytics data in Ads reports can be seen in the older Google Ads interface. That’s why we’ll have to return to previous interface.

   

8. Find “Columns” and click on “Modify Columns”.

   

9. Next, select Google Analytics metrics and add them to the report by clicking on the “Apply” button:

   

   It usually takes up to 24 hours for the data from GA to become available in Ads reports. To see the data, click on “Campaigns” and scroll to the right.

   

If you need to link multiple Google Ads accounts to Analytics, it’s better to create an Google Ads manager account (MCC). After creating the MCC account, you just need to link the account in the same way as described in the guide above.

Link via the Google Analytics interface

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Go to the Admin panel and click on the “Google Ads linking”.

   

3. If you’re using the same Google account for both services, you’ll see the list of the available accounts. Check the box next to the account you need and click “Continue”.

   

4. Now you have to enter a link group title and turn on the views in which you need the Google Ads data. Сlick on “Link accounts”.

   

   The Google Ads data will become available in Google Analytics reports in up to 24 hours after the linking. To find the data, click on the “Acquisition” section in the left pane, and choose “Google Ads”.

   

Ta da! Now the “Campaigns” reports in Google Ads and the “Acquisition” reports in Google Analytics will become more detailed. If you run advertising campaigns with services other than Google Ads, and want to see the cost data for these campaigns in your Google Analytics reports, there are two options. You could import the data manually using the Data Import feature, or use OWOX BI Pipeline to automate the import. In this way, you’ll get the data from Google Ads and non-Google advertising services together in a single Google Analytics report.

We hope that you’ll find the blogpost useful. In case you still have any questions left, we’d be happy to answer them in the comment section below;)