How to Add AdWords Campaign to Google Analytics

Connecting your Google Ads campaigns to Google Analytics is one of the most powerful steps you can take to understand what’s actually working with your advertising. It’s the difference between knowing how many people clicked an ad and knowing what they did afterward. This guide will walk you through exactly how to link the two platforms, why it’s so important, and how to find your ad performance data inside GA4.

Why Should You Connect Google Ads to Google Analytics?

On their own, both platforms are useful. Google Ads tells you how your campaigns are performing from an advertising perspective — clicks, impressions, cost-per-click (CPC). Google Analytics tells you how users behave on your website — which pages they visit, how long they stay, and if they convert. Linking them combines their strengths, giving you a complete view of the user journey.

Here are the key benefits:

• See the Full Funnel: Google Ads metrics stop when a user lands on your site. By connecting to Analytics, you can see what that ad traffic does next. Which campaigns drive visitors who view multiple pages? Which ad groups result in the highest bounce rates? This user engagement data helps you evaluate the quality of your ad traffic, not just the quantity.
• Unlock Deeper Engagement Metrics: Once linked, you can view specific on-site behavior for each campaign, ad group, and even keyword directly within Analytics. Clicks and conversions are important, but so are metrics like Engaged sessions, Average engagement time, and Events per user. If a campaign has a low direct conversion rate but generates highly engaged visitors who come back later, that’s a valuable insight you’d otherwise miss.
• Build Smarter Remarketing Audiences: This integration lets you create highly specific remarketing audiences in Google Analytics to use in your Google Ads campaigns. You can move beyond basic website visitors and target users based on their exact behavior. For example, you could create an audience of users who came from a specific ad campaign, watched a product video, added an item to their cart, but didn't complete the purchase. This level of granularity makes your remarketing spend far more efficient.
• Import Analytics Goals as Conversions: Your website may have important micro-conversions that aren't the final sale, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a PDF, or an "add to cart" event. You can set these up as events in Google Analytics and import them directly into your Google Ads account as conversion actions. This allows Google’s Smart Bidding algorithms to optimize for the full range of valuable user actions, not just the final purchase.

The A-ha Moment: An Example

Imagine you're running two Google Ads campaigns.

• Campaign A has a high click-through rate (CTR) and generates a lot of conversions according to Google Ads. On the surface, it’s a winner.
• Campaign B has a lower CTR and fewer direct conversions. You’re considering pausing it.

After linking to Google Analytics, you check the data. You discover visitors from Campaign A have an 85% bounce rate — they leave immediately after arriving. Visitors from Campaign B, however, have a low bounce rate, visit 4-5 pages per session, and sign up for your email list at a high rate (a goal you've imported from Analytics). You realize Campaign B is actually driving more valuable, long-term customers.

Without the linked data, you might have made the expensive mistake of pausing your better-performing campaign. This is the clarity this single integration provides.

Before You Link: What You'll Need

The process is straightforward, but you need to have a couple of things in place first to ensure it goes smoothly. Think of this as a quick pre-flight check:

• Administrative Access: You need to have "Administrator" role in Google Ads and "Editor" role (or higher) in Google Analytics.
• One Google Account: The easiest way to link them is by using the same Google email address that has the required permissions on both accounts. If you don't, you'll need the Admin on the other account to initiate the connection.
• A GA4 Property: Your website needs to have an active Google Analytics 4 property set up and collecting data. Universal Analytics (the older version) can no longer be linked to new Ads accounts and has stopped processing data.

Step-by-Step: How to Link Google Ads and GA4

Ready to go? The whole process should take you less than five minutes. Follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Open Google Analytics

Sign in to your Google Analytics account. Make sure you’ve selected the correct account and GA4 property you wish to link.

Step 2: Go to the Admin Section

In the bottom-left corner of the screen, click on the gear icon labeled Admin. This will open the administration page for your property.

Step 3: Find "Google Ads Links"

In the middle column (the "Property" column), scroll down until you see the "Product Links" section. Click on Google Ads Links.

Step 4: Start a New Link

You'll see a list of any existing links. To create a new one, click the blue Link button in the top right corner.

Step 5: Choose Your Google Ads Account

A new window will slide out, asking you to "Choose Google Ads accounts." If you're signed in with the same email for both platforms, you should see a list of Google Ads accounts you manage. Check the box next to the account(s) you want to link to this GA4 property, then click Confirm.

Step 6: Configure Your Settings

This is the most important step. You’ll be presented with a couple of configuration options.

• Turn on Personalized Advertising: Leave this toggled on. It’s what allows you to use your Analytics audiences for remarketing campaigns in Google Ads.
• Enable Auto-Tagging: This toggle should be on by default. Do not turn this off. Auto-tagging is the "magic" that makes the connection work seamlessly. It automatically adds a parameter called a "GCLID" (Google Click Identifier) to the end of your URLs every time someone clicks your ad. This unique ID tells Analytics that the visit came from a specific ad.

After confirming these settings, click Next.

Step 7: Review and Submit

You’ll see a final screen showing you the account you’re linking and the settings you’ve chosen. If everything looks correct, click Submit.

That's it! You'll see a "Link created" confirmation message. Your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are now connected. Keep in mind that it can take 24-48 hours for data to start populating in your reports.

Where to Find Your Google Ads Data in Google Analytics

Once you've waited a day or two for data to start flowing, you can begin analyzing it inside GA4. Here's where to look:

1. Go to Reports in the left-hand navigation.
2. Under the "Acquisition" menu, click on Acquisition overview. You should see a new card that summarizes your Google Ads campaign performance.
3. For a more detailed view, go to the Traffic acquisition report. Here, you can see how different channels are performing. You will start to see traffic attributed to the "Session default channel group" of Paid Search.

To really dig into your campaign data, use the primary dimension dropdown above the table. Change it from "Session default channel group" to one of the following:

• Session Google Ads campaign
• Session Google Ads ad group name
• Session Google Ads keyword text
• Session Google Ads query

Now you can see your core Analytics metrics — Users, Sessions, Engaged sessions, Average engagement time, Events, and Conversions — broken down by the specific campaign or ad group that brought the user to your site.

Potential Hiccups & Troubleshooting

Sometimes things don't go as planned. Here are answers to a few common issues.

"I can't see the Google Ads account I want to link."

This is almost always a permissions issue. Confirm that the email address you’re using to log into Analytics has "Administrator" access in the target Google Ads account.

"I've linked my accounts, but no data is showing up."

First, be patient. It can take up to 48 hours to initially populate. If it has been longer than that, double-check that Auto-Tagging is enabled in your Google Ads account. (Go to your Ads account > Settings > Account Settings > Auto-tagging and make sure the box is checked.)

"My data shows up as (not set)."

The dreaded (not set). This usually means the GCLID information is being lost between the ad click and the page load. The most common cause is a URL redirect on your website stripping the parameter from the URL. Talk to your web developer to ensure redirects pass all URL parameters through properly.

Final Thoughts

By connecting your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, you’re unlocking a much deeper level of insight into your ad performance. You move beyond simple ad metrics and start understanding the real business impact of your campaigns by analyzing the on-site behavior they generate.

Linking these two platforms is a critical first step. The true power, however, emerges when you view this information alongside data from your other sales and marketing channels. At Graphed, we connect directly to Google Ads and Analytics, as well as your CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, your email platform, and revenue sources like Shopify. This allows you to effortlessly see the complete journey from first ad click to final sale to lifetime customer value, all by asking simple questions in plain English instead of spending hours manually piecing together reports from ten different platforms.