How to Link AdWords and Google Analytics

Connecting your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts is one of the most important steps you can take to understand your marketing performance. It’s the difference between knowing how many people clicked your ad and knowing what they actually did on your website afterward. This guide will walk you through exactly why this connection is so vital and provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to get it done.

Why Bother Linking Google Ads and Analytics?

Diving into your data can feel overwhelming, but linking these two powerhouse platforms simplifies things immensely. Instead of a fragmented view of your advertising efforts, you get a single, cohesive story about your customer’s journey. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

See the Full Picture: From Click to Conversion

Google Ads tells you who clicked your ad and how much it cost. Google Analytics tells you what those people did once they landed on your site. When you link them, you unlock a much richer dataset. You can finally see metrics like:

• Bounce Rate: Are visitors from a specific campaign leaving your site immediately? It might be a sign of a mismatch between your ad copy and your landing page.
• Pages per Session: Are certain ad groups driving more engaged visitors who explore multiple pages? What are they looking at?
• Average Session Duration: How long are people from your paid search campaigns sticking around compared to those from organic search or social media?

Without this connection, you're essentially flying blind, optimizing for clicks instead of conversions and engagement. You might be paying for traffic that looks good on paper but doesn't contribute to your bottom line.

Import GA4 Goals Directly into Google Ads

Perhaps the most powerful benefit is the ability to use your Google Analytics 4 conversions as optimization goals in Google Ads. Maybe your key conversion isn't a purchase, but something more nuanced, like a user downloading a PDF, signing up for a newsletter, or watching a demo video. You can track these events easily in GA4.

Once linked, you can import these specific conversion events into Google Ads. This allows you to tell Google’s algorithm, "Don't just get me clicks, get me people who are likely to download my whitepaper." This makes your ad campaigns smarter, more efficient, and directly aligned with your true business objectives.

Build Powerful Remarketing Audiences

Remarketing is a fantastic way to reconnect with people who have already shown interest in your brand. Linking Google Ads and GA4 takes your remarketing capabilities to a new level. You’re no longer limited to basic audiences like “all website visitors.”

Instead, you can build hyper-specific audiences in Google Analytics based on user behavior and then target them with tailored ads. For example, you can create lists of:

• Users who visited your pricing page but didn't sign up.
• Visitors who added items to their cart but abandoned the purchase.
• People who landed from a specific ad campaign and spent more than three minutes on your site.
• Returning users who have viewed your blog multiple times.

These granular audiences allow for incredibly relevant and effective advertising, bringing warm leads back into your funnel.

View Google Ads Performance Data Within GA4

Tired of toggling between a dozen browser tabs to piece together a report? Linking your accounts syncs your core Google Ads metrics - like Clicks, Cost, Cost Per Click (CPC), and Impressions - directly into your Google Analytics reports. This lets you analyze both advertising Cost data and onsite Behavior data in a single view, simplifying your reporting and making it much easier to spot trends and identify performance issues.

Before You Start: What You'll Need

To avoid any frustrating permission-related roadblocks, make sure you have the following in place before you begin the linking process. It’s a simple checklist that will save you a lot of headaches.

• Administrator access to your Google Ads account. Standard or Read-only access won't be enough to create the link.
• Editor role for your Google Analytics 4 property. You need this level of permission to modify property settings and connect other products.
• Use the same Google email for both accounts. While you can link accounts using different emails, it's far simpler if the email you use to log in to Google Ads is the same one that has Editor permissions in GA4. This streamlines the process and ensures Google can easily recognize your access levels.

Step-by-Step Guide: Linking Your Google Ads and Analytics Accounts

Ready to make it happen? The process is straightforward and should only take a few minutes. We’ll be starting from the Google Analytics 4 interface, which is the most common and recommended workflow.

Step 1: Navigate to the Admin Section in GA4

First, log in to your Google Analytics account. In the bottom-left corner of the screen, you'll see a small gear icon labeled Admin. Click on it to go to the main settings page.

Step 2: Go to Google Ads Links

On the Admin screen, you will see two columns: Account and Property. Look under the Property column for a section called Product Links. Within this section, click on Google Ads Links.

Step 3: Create the Link

On the next screen, you’ll see a blue button in the top-right corner labeled Link. Click it.

Now, you need to select the Google Ads account you want to connect. Click on Choose Google Ads accounts. A list of Google Ads accounts associated with your email login will appear. If you've followed the prerequisites, the account you manage should appear here. Check the box next to the correct account and click the Confirm button in the top-right.

Step 4: Configure Your Settings

This is where you tell Google how you want the two platforms to share data. You have a couple of important options:

• Enable Personalized Advertising: Keep this toggle switched on. This is what allows you to use the remarketing audiences you build in GA4 for your Google Ads campaigns. Disabling it severely limits the power of the integration.
• Enable Auto-Tagging: This setting is absolutely critical. Ensure the box is checked. Auto-tagging automatically adds a unique parameter (the gclid) to the end of your ad's destination URL. This tiny piece of code is what allows Google Analytics to precisely track every detail about the click — which campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad it came from. Without it, your paid traffic data will be lumped into a generic "(not set)" category in your reports, making it impossible to analyze performance.

Once you’ve configured these settings, click Next.

Step 5: Submit and Verify the Link

The final screen gives you a chance to review your configuration. Give it a quick once-over to make sure you’ve selected the right account and your settings are correct. When you're ready, click the blue Submit button.

That's it! You've successfully linked your accounts. You'll be taken back to the 'Google Ads Links' page, where you'll see your newly linked account in the table with a 'Linked' status. It can take 24 to 48 hours for data to start populating in your reports, so be patient.

You’ve Linked Your Accounts. Now What?

The link is just the beginning. The real value comes from using the integrated data. Here are a few things you should do right away.

Check Your Acquisition Reports

After a day or two, head over to your GA4 reports. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. In the data table, you should now see 'Paid Search' traffic segmented, and if you use the 'Session source / medium' dimension, you'll see 'google / cpc'. You can add a secondary dimension like 'Session campaign' to see performance data broken down by each of your Google Ads campaigns.

Import GA4 Conversions into Google Ads

Turn valuable website actions into optimizable goals for your campaigns.

1. Log in to Google Ads.
2. Click on Tools and settings (the wrench icon) in the top menu, then select Conversions under 'Measurement'.
3. Click the + New conversion action button.
4. Select Import, choose Google Analytics 4 properties, and then click Web.
5. You'll see a list of the conversion events you’ve set up in GA4. Select the ones you want to use for campaign optimization in Google Ads and click Import and continue.

Create Smarter Remarketing Audiences

Start thinking about user behaviors you want to target. Head to the Admin section of GA4 and click on Audiences under the 'Property' column. Here, you can create new audiences based on events, dimensions, and user segments. Once created, these audiences will automatically become available in your Google Ads account's Audience Manager, ready to be used in remarketing campaigns.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

If you hit a snag, it's usually one of a few common problems. Here are the most frequent issues and how to solve them.

"I don't see my Google Ads account in the list."

This is almost always a permissions issue. Double-check that you are signed in with the same email address for both platforms and that this email has Administrator access in Google Ads and the Editor role in Google Analytics.

"My data isn't showing up in Google Analytics."

First, give it time — it can take up to 48 hours. If it's still missing after that, check your auto-tagging status. Go into your Google Ads account, click on Admin > Account Settings, and make sure the 'Auto-tagging' option is enabled. If it was turned off, new data will only start appearing from the moment you enable it.

"The data in Google Ads and Google Analytics doesn't match."

Don't panic, this is normal. The two platforms measure things differently. For example, Google Ads tracks Clicks, while Analytics tracks Sessions. A user might click your ad twice in 30 minutes, which counts as two clicks in Ads but only one session in Analytics. They also use different attribution models by default. Minor discrepancies are expected and don't necessarily mean something is broken.

Final Thoughts

Connecting Google Ads to Google Analytics transforms your marketing analysis. Instead of just tracking ad spend and surface-level metrics, you gain a deep understanding of user behavior, allowing you to make smarter, data-driven decisions that improve campaign performance and maximize your return on investment.

Linking platforms like Google Analytics and Google Ads is a fantastic first step. The next step is connecting all your other marketing and sales tools to get a single, unified view of your business. That’s why we built Graphed. We make it easy to sync all your data sources — from Shopify and Salesforce to Facebook Ads and HubSpot — in one place. Then, you can simply ask questions in plain English like, "Show me a dashboard of my marketing funnel, from Facebook ad spend to new Shopify sale," and get instant answers and live dashboards, ending the need to manually wrangle data ever again.