How do I use Google Analytics for Google Ads?

Google Analytics can be connected to your Google Ads account. This will give you access to valuable insight into the performance of your various ad campaigns. By connecting Google Analytics to Google Ads, you can see data specifically on the users who came to your site via one of your ads. You can then use this data, gain more insight into the behaviour of these users and compare it to general statistics to determine how effective your campaigns are and where there’s room for improvement.

In order to access Google Ads data in Google Analytics, you’ll first need to link them. Once this is done and everything is set up, you can view your Google Ads data in Google Analytics under Acquisition. The data displayed here can be viewed and analyzed the same way as any other data in Google Analytics.

Linking Google Ads to Google Analytics will offer you a variety of data, which you can use in a variety of ways.

Accounts, for example, allow you to view the overall performance of your linked Google Ads accounts in one clear overview. This can serve as a general indicator of how your ads are doing.

Campaigns allow you to learn how your campaigns are performing. Selecting various metrics like the acquisition metrics or behaviour metrics allows you to gain insight into how users coming from your ads are behaving. For example, how often are people coming from the ads converting? Or which of your ads is bringing you the highest conversion rate? Check out the conversion metric here to find out. 

Hour of Day can give you insight into when the optimal time to run your ads would be. Search queries offers you insight into which searches led users to your ads. And these are just a few examples. By analyzing this data and using it cleverly, you can make your ads rise above the rest and drive your conversions up.

Note: in the Source/Medium data, ads from Google Ads are displayed as google/cpc.

How do I Iink my Google Ads account with Google Analytics?

You can link Google Ads accounts to a property in Google Analytics. 

To link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics property, follow these steps:

  1. On your Google Analytics homescreen, open your admin settings (the gear icon in the navigation bar to the left)
  2. In the middle column, select the property you want to link the Google Ads account to.
  3. In the middle column, click on ‘Google Ads linking’
  4. Click ‘+ New link group’
  5. Select the Google Ads account(s) you want to link. You can link up to 1000 Google Analytics accounts to a single link group.
    Note: adding a Google Ads manager account will also add all of its child accounts. If you don’t want this, simply expand the manager account and individually select the child accounts you want to add.
  6. Click ‘continue’
  7. Enter a title for the link group. Make sure it’s something easily identifiable
  8. You will now see an overview of the views within the property you are linking to. Turn linking on for every view you want to include the Google Ads data in
  9. If you wish to include Google Display Network Impression Reporting in your view, select ‘Enable Google Display Network Impression Reporting’. 
  10. Google strongly recommends auto-tagging to be enabled in Google Ads when you link it to Google Analytics. If you have already enabled auto-tagging or you’re OK with Google Analytics enabling it for you, skip to step 11.
    If you want to manually tag your Google Ads links, go to ‘Advanced settings’ and select ‘Leave my auto-tagging settings as they are’
  11. Click ‘Link accounts’

Your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts should now be connected! To verify this, wait a little bit, then go to Google Analytics and try to view the reports.

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