Google continues to simplify how its family of products work together, the most recent partnership logically being the linking of Google AdWords statistics to your Google Analytics account. The good news is, once you complete the linking steps, not only will Analytics pick your historical data, you will now be able to review all of your Analytics data right from your AdWords account.
Here are the easy steps we have followed for several clients to make that happen:
Log in to Google AdWords
- go to the My Account tab
- select Preferences
- look for Tracking
- if it says "No thanks" click Edit
- check the Auto-tagging checkbox
- save changes
Your stats (past and future) should feed over to your Google Analytics data within 24 hours.
Following are the steps available on the official Google AdWords help page, which we found slightly lacking in the process of how to get to the Auto-tagging setting which are simply stated above.
- Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
- Select the Tools & Analysis tab and choose "Google Analytics."
- Select "I already have a Google Analytics account."
- From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down menu, select the name of the Analytics account you'd like to link to. If you don't see it listed, you'll need to first add your AdWords username to your Analytics account as an Account Admin.
- Keep the checkboxes selected on this page, unless you're sure you'd like to disable auto-tagging. For importing cost data, read "How can I import my AdWords cost data?"
- Select Link Account.
You're finished! Your two accounts should now be linked. If you opted to keep auto-tagging turned on, Analytics will start automatically tagging your AdWords links. You'll be able to track the behavior of visitors coming from your AdWords ads, making it easier to gauge the ROI of your AdWords budget and make changes as necessary.
* You may see a website domain name in the drop-down menu in step 4. This is because you chose to name your account after the website URL. All profiles in your account, regardless of their domain, will be associated with AdWords once you've established the link.
Let us know if we can help with the linking process, or any other support on your AdWords or Analytics statistics.
Sharon Rowe
Professional Client Services Manager
Acorn Internet Services
Thank you very much. I hadn’t even thought to have analytics for our campaign. I have done the steps and it was really very easy to do based on your steps. I am now waiting to view the new analytics. This will really help.
Thank you Sharon,
You made this task very simple, otherwise I would have never done it using the google “help” instructions! I look forward to seeing how my adwords are effecting my overall business.