Where in Your Google Analytics 4 Property Can You Manage Product Links Like This One with Google Ads?
If you're running Google Ads, you know half the battle is figuring out what happens after someone clicks your ad. Linking your Google Ads and Google Analytics 4 accounts is the key to unlocking that post-click data, but finding where to manage these connections can feel like a scavenger hunt. This article will show you exactly where to find and manage your product links in GA4 and walk you through the process of connecting your accounts to get a complete view of your advertising performance.
Why Connecting Google Ads to GA4 is Non-Negotiable
Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Linking these two powerful platforms isn't just a technical step, it's a strategic move that fundamentally changes how you analyze and optimize your advertising efforts. When your accounts are siloed, you're flying blind. You can see clicks and impressions in Google Ads, and you can see session and engagement metrics in GA4, but you can't easily connect the two.
Here’s what you unlock by linking them:
- See the Full Customer Journey: You can trace the path from a user clicking your ad all the way to a conversion on your website. This clarity helps you understand which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are truly driving valuable actions.
- Better Campaign Optimization: By importing your GA4 conversion goals (like form submissions or purchases) directly into Google Ads, you can optimize your campaigns based on real business outcomes, not just clicks. This helps Smart Bidding strategies work more effectively.
- Powerful Retargeting Audiences: You can build highly specific audiences in GA4 based on user behavior (e.g., "users who abandon their cart" or "users who have viewed more than 3 blog posts") and use these lists to create targeted remarketing campaigns in Google Ads.
- Richer Reporting: Get detailed Google Ads performance data right inside your GA4 reports, and conversely, get key GA4 engagement metrics like bounce rate and session duration inside your Google Ads UI.
Simply put, this link bridges the gap between ad spend and user behavior, giving you the insights needed to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Where to Find and Manage Your Google Ads Link
Let's get straight to the answer. The place to manage connections to other Google products is located within the Admin section of your property. It’s a bit tucked away, but once you know where it is, you won’t forget it.
Here are the exact steps to find the Google Ads linking page:
- Log in to your Google Analytics 4 account.
- Look for the Admin gear icon in the bottom-left corner of your screen and click on it.
- You'll now see two columns: 'Account' and 'Property.' Stay in the Property column.
- Scroll down until you find the sub-heading called Product Links.
- Under this sub-heading, click on Google Ads Links.
That's it. You've found the control center for all of your Google Ads connections. From this page, you can see any existing links, create new ones, or delete ones you no longer need.
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Linking the Accounts
Now that you know where to go, let's walk through the process of creating a new link. Before you begin, you’ll need to make sure you have the necessary "Administrator" role on the Google Ads account and the "Editor" role on the GA4 property. It's also easiest if you use the same Google account login for both.
Step 1: Start the Linking Process From the "Google Ads Links" page you just navigated to, click the blue Link button at the top of the table.
Step 2: Choose Your Google Ads Accounts A new screen will appear. Click on Choose Google Ads accounts. Google will automatically show a list of all the Google Ads accounts for which you are an Administrator. Find the account(s) you want to link and check the box next to their name. You can link multiple accounts at once. Once selected, click the Confirm button in the top right.
Step 3: Configure Your Settings After confirming your account, click Next. You’ll be taken to the "Configure settings" page. There are two important options here:
- Enable Personalized Advertising: This setting allows you to use the GA4 audiences you create for remarketing campaigns in Google Ads. It is highly recommended to leave this enabled. This is the magic that powers your retargeting lists.
- Enable Auto-tagging: This is arguably the most critical setting. Keep this enabled. When it's on, Google Ads automatically adds a unique parameter (the GCLID, or Google Click ID) to the end of your destination URLs. This ID allows GA4 to precisely attribute traffic, cost data, and conversions back to the specific campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword that brought the user to your site. Without it, your Google Ads traffic might show up as "(not set)" or simply "google / cpc" without the granular detail you need.
After confirming these settings are enabled, click Next.
Step 4: Review and Submit Finally, you’ll see a review screen showing the Ads account you're linking and the settings you've chosen. If everything looks correct, click the Submit button. You should see a "Link created" confirmation message, and your new link will appear in the table.
What Happens After You Link Your Accounts?
Linking is just the beginning. The real value is in the integrated data that now starts flowing between the two platforms. Note: It can sometimes take up to 48 hours for data to fully populate after the link is established, so don't worry if you don't see it immediately.
New Reports in Google Analytics 4
Once linked, head over to the Reports section in GA4. Navigate to Acquisition > Acquisition overview. You should see a new card dedicated to Google Ads. You can also explore the Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report and see detailed campaign data by selecting a session source/medium related to Google Ads. The link unlocks access to specific dimensions you didn't have before, such as:
- Session Google Ads ad group name
- Session Google Ads ad network type
- Session Google Ads keyword text
This lets you analyze the performance of your ad campaigns with the same granularity as you would inside Google Ads, but now paired with powerful GA4 behavior metrics like engagement rate, event count, and conversions.
New Data Columns in Google Ads
The data flows both ways. Over in your Google Ads account, you can now add GA4 metrics to your reporting tables. Go to any campaign or ad group, click the Columns button, and then click Modify columns. Scroll down and you’ll find a Google Analytics section. Here, you can add valuable post-click metrics such as:
- Bounce rate
- Engaged sessions
- Average engagement time
- GA4 conversions
Adding these columns to your daily view can give you immediate insight into the quality of your ad traffic. A campaign with a high click-through rate but an extremely high bounce rate might be driving low-quality traffic, prompting an investigation into your ad copy or landing page.
Common Troubleshooting Tips for Linking Errors
Sometimes things don't go as smoothly as planned. Here are a couple of common issues you might run into and how to fix them.
Problem: I don't see the Google Ads account I want to link.
This is almost always a permissions issue. For an account to show up in the list, you must have an "Administrator" role on that Google Ads account, and it must be associated with the same email you're using for Google Analytics. Double-check your user permissions in Google Ads to make sure they are set correctly.
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Problem: Data isn't showing up, even after 48 hours.
The most likely culprit is auto-tagging. While the setup process prompts you to enable it, sometimes it can be disabled at the account level in Google Ads. To check, go into your Google Ads account and navigate to Settings > Account Settings and ensure the "Auto-tagging" section is toggled ON. If this was off, your past traffic won't be attributed correctly, but newly-tracked traffic will be once you enable it.
Problem: I'm seeing "(not set)" in my Google Ads dimensions in GA4.
This signifies that GA4 is receiving traffic driven by ads but can't match it to a specific campaign or keyword. Again, this points to a disabled auto-tagging feature. It can also be caused by URL redirects on your website that strip the gclid parameter from the URL before GA4's tracking script can read it. Consult with your web developer to ensure no redirects are interfering with your tracking parameters.
Final Thoughts
Finding the product linking section in GA4 is simple once you know it's hidden in plain sight within the Admin panel. By linking Google Ads and Google Analytics 4, you're doing much more than checking a box, you're creating a powerful, interconnected analytics system that turns raw click data into actionable insights about your customer behavior and campaign effectiveness.
While linking Google products is a fantastic first step, true understanding comes from seeing the whole picture. That often means combining your GA4 and Google Ads data with information from your CRM like Salesforce, your e-commerce platform like Shopify, and your other ad platforms like Facebook Ads. That's why we created Graphed. We automate the process of connecting all your disparate data sources into one place. Instead of spending hours digging through admin panels and wrangling spreadsheets, you can ask simple questions like, "What was my Facebook Ads ROI compared to Google Ads last month?" and instantly get a live dashboard with the answers.
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