How to View AdWords in Google Analytics

You’re running Google Ads and seeing clicks, but how can you tell what’s really working? To understand the true value of your campaigns, you need to see what users do after they click. By connecting Google Ads with Google Analytics, you can unlock a full-funnel view of your ad performance, from first impression to final conversion.

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This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to link the two platforms, a few best practices to ensure your data is clean, and where to find the key reports that will help you spend your ad budget more intelligently.

Why Bother Linking Google Ads and Analytics?

Before diving into the “how,” it helps to understand the “why.” Linking these two powerful platforms isn’t just about seeing numbers in a different dashboard - it’s about gaining deeper, more actionable context that Google Ads alone can’t provide.

Here are the three biggest benefits:

• Get Richer Behavioral Data: Google Ads tells you how many people clicked and what it cost. Google Analytics tells you what those people did next. By linking them, you can finally answer critical questions like: Which campaigns bring in the most engaged users? Do visitors from my "Brand" campaign look at more pages than visitors from my "Competitor" campaign? Which keywords result in high bounce rates, indicating a mismatch between your ad and your landing page?
• Track True Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): You can import your important GA4 conversion goals - like form submissions, newsletter sign-ups, or actual online purchases - right back into Google Ads. This allows Google's Smart Bidding algorithms to optimize for the actions that actually matter to your business, not just clicks. It connects your ad spend directly to valuable outcomes.
• Build Smarter Remarketing Audiences: Imagine creating a remarketing list of users who came from a specific ad campaign, spent more than three minutes on your site, visited your pricing page, but didn't sign up. With the GA4 and Google Ads link, you can build these highly specific audience segments and then target them with tailored ads. This is a level of precision you can’t achieve with either platform on its own.

Simply put, this integration transforms your ad data from a simple cost report into a detailed performance analysis, helping you stop wasting money and start investing in what works.

How to Link Google Ads to Google Analytics 4 (Step-by-Step)

The linking process is straightforward, but you need to be an admin on both platforms to get it done. Assuming you have the right permissions, let’s begin.

Prerequisites: What You Need First

Before connecting, make sure you meet two small requirements:

• Administrator Access to Google Ads: You need an account with 'Admin' level access.
• Administrator or Editor Role in Google Analytics: You'll need Admin or Editor privileges on the GA4 property you want to connect. Editor works fine in most cases, but Admin is best to be safe.

Once you’ve confirmed your access, here’s how to create the link:

Step 1: Navigate to the Admin Section in GA4

Log in to your Google Analytics 4 account. In the bottom-left corner, click on the gear icon to open the Admin panel.

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Step 2: Find the Google Ads Links Section

In the Admin panel, you'll see two columns: "Account" and "Property." Under the Property column, look for the Product Links section. Click on Google Ads Links.

Step 3: Create a New Link

On the Google Ads Links screen, you'll see a blue Link button. Click on it. If you've already linked an account, this screen will show your existing connections.

You’ll now see a new screen prompting you to choose the Google Ads accounts to link. Click Choose Google Ads accounts.

Step 4: Select Your Account and Confirm

A list of Google Ads accounts associated with your Google email will appear. Check the box next to the account(s) you want to link. Pro Tip: Double-check that the Google Ads Customer ID (it looks like a phone number: xxx-xxx-xxxx) matches the account you want to connect.

After selecting your account, click the Confirm button in the top-right corner. Then, click Next.

Step 5: Configure the Link Settings

This step is where the magic happens. You’ll be presented with a couple of important settings. For best results, you should enable both of them.

Enable Personalized Advertising

Leave this toggled ON. This setting allows Google Analytics to share audience data with Google Ads, which is essential for creating those advanced remarketing lists we talked about earlier.

Enable Auto-Tagging

Ensure this is also toggled ON. Auto-tagging automatically adds a gclid (Google Click Identifier) parameter to the URL of every ad click. This little piece of code is what allows GA4 to understand precisely which campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad creative the visitor came from.

Without auto-tagging, your paid traffic would just show up as ‘google / organic’ or a generic 'google / cpc' without any of the rich campaign-level detail. For a clean, accurate connection, auto-tagging is non-negotiable.

Once you’ve configured the settings, click Next, review your choices, and then click Submit.

And that’s it! Your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are now linked. You should see your new connection appear in the list with a "Linked" status. Note that it can take 24-48 hours for new data to start flowing into your GA4 reports.

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Where to Find and Analyze Google Ads Data in GA4

Once your accounts are linked and data has had time to populate, where do you actually find it? Your Google Ads data becomes integrated throughout GA4, but there are a few key reports dedicated to it.

The Main View: The Google Ads Campaigns Report

The most specific and useful report lives in the Advertising workspace. Here's how to get to it:

1. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on Advertising.
2. Under the “Performance” section, click on Google Ads Campaigns.

This report is the go-to spot for getting a high-level overview of your campaigns. It combines metrics from both platforms in one clean table. You'll see familiar Google Ads metrics like Clicks, Cost, and Cost per click right next to crucial GA4 metrics like Sessions, Engaged sessions, Conversions, and Total revenue.

This unified view lets you instantly see which campaigns have a low cost-per-click but also have a terrible engagement rate - a classic sign of wasted ad spend.

How to Drill Down for Deeper Insights

The real power of GA4 lies in its ability to pivot your data on the fly. In the Google Ads Campaigns report, the default view shows performance by "Session Google Ads campaign." But you can change this primary dimension to get more granular:

• Session Google Ads ad group name: See a summary of each ad group within your campaigns.
• Session Google Ads keyword text: Analyze the performance of individual keywords. This is invaluable for finding keywords that drive lots of expensive clicks but no conversions.
• Session Google Ads query: See the actual search terms people typed into Google to trigger your ads. This can help you identify new negative keywords to exclude or uncover new opportunities.

To switch between these views, just click the dropdown arrow next to the primary dimension (which defaults to "Session Google ads campaign").

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Finding Ads Data in Your Standard Acquisition Reports

You can also view your ads data alongside all your other traffic sources in the standard acquisition reports:

On the left-hand menu, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. To see just your Google Ads traffic, use the filter bar at the top or simply look for rows where the Session source / medium is ‘google / cpc’.

This unified view helps you see how paid search performs in relation to your other marketing channels, such as organic search, social media, or email.

Putting It All Together: 3 Practical Analyses You Can Do Now

Reading reports is one thing, but making decisions is another. Here are three simple ways to use this newly linked data to improve your advertising.

1. Find Keywords That Waste Money

• How to do it: Go to the Google Ads Campaigns report and change the primary dimension to Session Google Ads keyword text. Sort the table by Clicks in descending order. Now, look for keywords that have a high number of clicks but a very low number of Conversions and a low Engagement rate.
• The Insight: These are your "money pit" keywords. People are clicking, you're paying for it, but they're not converting. Pause these keywords in your Google Ads campaign or try rewriting the ad/landing page to better match intent.

2. Identify Your Most Profitable Campaigns and Ad Groups

• How to do it: Staying in the Google Ads Campaigns report, make sure your primary dimension is set to Session Google Ads campaign or Session Google Ads ad group name. Add Cost as a secondary metric next to sales (Conversions) to help with optimization. Sort by "Conversions," "Revenue," or "Cost."
• The Insight: Campaigns that drive the best results (many conversions at a low cost) are the ones you should consider increasing the budget for. The ones with a high cost but few conversions are burning your money without offering returns. Conversely, campaigns with unexpectedly high revenue at a low cost might indicate an unrealized opportunity.

3. Optimize Your Landing Pages

• How to do it: In the Google Ads Campaigns report, add the Landing Page dimension. Analyze high-traffic but low-conversion pages to modify content for better alignment with your campaign goals.
• The Insight: A high volume of traffic with low conversions on a landing page might indicate misaligned content. Updating and testing different headlines, layouts, or CTAs can improve conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

Connecting your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts is a foundational step towards seeing what drives business growth. It moves you from just seeing clicks and costs to understanding the user behaviors that lead to actual revenue and helps you make smarter decisions.

Pulling these reports in GA4 gives you excellent context, and to simplify this process, we built Graphed. Instead of navigating through numerous interfaces, our speech-driven approach allows users to interact and create reports, ensuring their time is spent efficiently on critical tasks.