How to link Google Ads with Google analytics?

Unifying Google Adwords with Google Analytics can help you to know through a single tool the full performance of your campaigns and ads.

If you want to know how to link both tools in a practical way, read on!

The joint analytics and Adwords management is advisable for all those customers who carry out payment campaigns and want to get an integrated knowledge of how their ads work and optimize the conversion possibilities. With the Google Adwords Campaigns We get users to land on our website and, when they have already entered, Google Analytics is responsible for analyzing the behavior of the user. In this way, we can optimize the campaigns, pages and budgets to improve the ROI (Return of the investment).

What are the main advantages of linking Google Ads and analytics?

• Access Analytics metrics in Adwords , for example, the percentage of new sessions, new users vs. recurrent users, pages per session, percentage of rebound, transactions in case of an ecommerce, average session duration…

• Know the most relevant Adwords metrics in the Analytics interface: Clicks, cost, CPC, CTR, ROI, among others.

• Get multichannel funnel data and improve the performance of Google Adwords campaigns.

• Import Google Analytics targets into Google Adwords account and improve conversion performance. When we talk about objectives we refer to activities carried out on a website: subscription to the newsletter, visits with a duration of more than 30 seconds, reproduction of a video. In this article, we tell you in depth the Types of Google analytics objectives.

• Do Remarketing In Adwords with imported lists of analytics. This allows to segment users depending on the behavior they have had on your website: product added to the cart, sending a form, downloading a catalog, users who haven’t been buying for more than a year… There are infinite possibilities. We encourage you to test, test and analyze the lists that work best for you.

Linking analytics and Google Ads

 To carry out this process, we must take into account:

1. Have property admin/editor rights in Google Analytics.
2. Have administration rights in Google Adwords.
3. The Google analytics account must have enabled the option to share product and service data with the other Google products.

With these 3 aspects resolved, we begin the process!

In this article, we will explain how to link both accounts through the Google Analytics Administration panel.

• Enter Google Adwords and from Tools, choose Google Analytics. In Google Analytics, go to Administrator, select the account you want to link and click on “Adwords link”.

• Select the account you want to link to Google Adwords and click on “continue”. Then Select the view or views you want to link.

In this section, we recommend you select the view with which you really go to work the data that you report the Google Adwords campaigns. Therefore, we advise you to leave the view “all the data of the Web site” as it is and to create a view with filters that shows you the information that really interests you and to link this with Google Adwords. Or, you can even create a Google Adwords-specific view, where you only work when you have campaigns activated.

• Advanced configuration. We recommend that you select the “Enable automatic tagging” option. Automatic tagging makes it easier to work because you don’t have to manually tag all the final URLS and fall into possible errors. In addition, it offers more detailed analytics reports and lets you know what users have done on a Web page after you clicked the ad. With this option, you can import Google analytics targets and transactions into tracking Adwords conversions.

• To finish, select link accounts.

And that simple, the process is already done. Keep in mind that data can take 24 hours to update. In addition, they are different tools, so that sometimes the data of clicks, visits or page views It is possible that they are not identical, since each one is developed for a specific purpose. The frequency in updating the data for each tool can also lead to differences in the analyses.

And now comes the most interesting, how to consult and analyze the data?

There are multiple combinations to query the data, from if you want to compare the users that come from Google Adwords with the rest of the traffic of the site or know how they behave the users of Adwords through mobile devices…

To begin with, the most practical thing is to enter the Acquisition tab AND Select Adwords. From here, you will see a drop-down with all the options you can analyze. If you go into campaigns, you can quickly see how each one works because it shows you clicks, CPC, cost, sessions, transactions and conversions. In addition, you can filter by secondary dimensions and debug the data depending on what you want to measure or KPIS established.

Your mission now is to put everything you’ve learned into practice. Experience and tell us your impressions!