Linking up Google AdWords and Google Analytics
– posted July 9th, 2007 by Clodagh Kelly Comments (4)
Linking your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics allows you to gather detailed information about the behaviour of your AdWords visitors on your website. You’re paying for the traffic, so make sure you get the best value you can by building your future web and AdWords strategy around real visitor data.
But, getting the two interacting together properly and getting real value is a little more complex than you might think. Despite the fact that it’s not that hard to do, we’ve seen several clients who haven’t properly linked them up, or even who haven’t linked them up at all. So, here are some pointers to help you get these two Google products working together like well oiled cogs in a machine!
Linking Analytics and AdWords
To link up Analytics and AdWords you must have both an Google AdWords and Google Analytics account, so make sure these are set up before you proceed.
Then do the following:
- Log into Adwords and click into the preferences tab
- Select “I already have an analytics account”
- From the “Existing Google accounts” select the website you want to link up
- Tick check boxes you want to retain
- Click “Link account”
That’s it! Read on for a few tips on how to make sure they are working in perfect harmony.
Tip #1: Enabling auto-tagging
If you want to track an advertising campaign in Google Analytics, you have to manually tag all your ads including up to 5 different variables so that details can be captured in Google Analytics.
The beauty of using AdWords and Analytics together is that all your AdWords campaigns will be automatically tagged, saving you valuable time and money!
However, you DO need to make sure that auto tagging is enabled. Otherwise you won’t capture your data properly.
Auto tagging is enabled in the Ad Words interface:
- Click the My Account tab and select Account Preferences
- In the Tracking section, make sure the Auto-tagging field is set to yes.
Tip #2: Keep an eye on timezones
The timezone on Google AdWords takes precedence over Google Analytics, so if you link your accounts together, and the timezone is set differently, or is still set to a U.S timezone, then it will override your Analytics settings and the times on your reports will be skewed.
So, when you are linking the two up, make sure that you have set the timezone in AdWords correctly.
Tip #3: Isolate AdWords traffic for thorough analysis
To analyse your AdWords visitors in a single profile in your Analytics account, create a new profile for your website and set it to include only AdWords visitors by setting up a custom include filter as follows:
Then you can segment away to your heart’s content!
(Auto-tagging must be turned on for this to work.)
Any other hints or tips?
That’s all from me at the moment - if you have any more tips on Google Analytics or Adwords, feel free to add them below!
UPDATE: If you’ve already linked a different analytics account to your Adwords
account you will need to contact Google to have them unlink the
accounts.
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Categories Technology, Web analytics
4 comments so far
1. Dave Davis on Jul 9th, 2007 - 18:16
Great Article Clodagh.
Nothing about goals? Specifically setting at least one goal the same as your conversion event to compare the different sources of your conversions?
2. Clodagh Kelly on Jul 9th, 2007 - 18:35
Hi Dave,
Thanks!
That’s another great tip. Obviously you would have to set up the goal in a GA profile that doesn’t exclude other sources of traffic.
Actually, there’s lots of different ways goals can be used in GA to analyse your traffic apart from the standard goal = conversion setup. For example, setting a goal to be your search page or contact us page allows you see the paths users have taken before they search for a specific term or try to find your phone number, but that is another blog post for another day!
3. Dave Davis on Jul 10th, 2007 - 18:48
Of course, but when linking the AdWords and Analytics, I think it is essential to have at least ONE of the five goals as the same conversion trigger for a PPC ad.
This is useful when it comes to cross channel tracking (Pain in the a**) but can be very useful when handing over the reports to the KPI centric guys upstairs!
Another handy tip is to actually set up a goal as a known falloff point in your sales funnel so that can be tracked and understood at a keyword granular level. That gets onto segmenting searchers intentions though, probably another post
4. john blankey - business name ideas on Jul 22nd, 2007 - 03:48
I’ve been using AdWords but I’m pretty new to it. I was wondering how to track my clicks to sales and this seems like some wonderful information. It seem to me the less words and the more targeted they are the better. at least from what I’ve seen. I have used these two together but I did not set the time zone for them to the same time. So that was useful information to say the least.
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