When you click on the left-hand navigation column on ‘Acquisition’, ‘Google Ads’ and then ‘Campaigns’ you can see the details of the Google Ads account that is associated with your Analytics account. Theoretically, this matches the experience you can see in your Google Ads account right?
Sometimes, you see ad groups you don’t recognise though, and it might be another ad account running that you either forgot about, or that someone else is running and still letting it send ads traffic in your direction. (It is very important to find out which account it is if you are also still paying for it every month from your credit card!).
To check which Google Ads account is linked to your Analytics account, go to the bottom of the left-hand navigation column and click ‘Admin’ (shown here is Universal Analytics). From here in the middle column under ‘Product Linking’ you will see ‘Google Ads Linking’. Click that to see what’s listed under this Analytics account. There is usually just one Google Ads property, but if there is more than one you can investigate.
Click into the individual linked views to check the settings and the account number of the linked Google Ads account. You can cross check in Google Ads that the number is the same.
A Google Ads unique ID is two groups of three numbers followed by four numbers in this format:
111-111-1111
If there is an account number you don’t recognise then you can get in touch with previous agencies to ask if it belongs to them and to double check there is no traffic being sent via that route. Once you are happy that an ‘unknown’ account can be unlinked, you can perform this task in this interface too.
This would be point at which we state that this is a salutary lesson in keeping good records in order and remembering who did what for you at what point in time.
If you keep records – for instance ‘account number 111-111-1111 is the Manchester ads agency account’ or ‘account number 222-222-2222 is the master account that our company owns’ – then you should be able to identify what is what quite readily.
If you are happy you don’t need a link with a certain account anymore, you can delete it from your Analytics account and move on with your life. If it is causing confusion or you don’t know who owns a particular account or whether it is spending any of your money, then you can raise a support call with Google to get to the bottom of your Google account relationships.
We hope that this series of articles will save you hours of searching for how to deal with small tasks. Take a look at the other articles we’ve put together:
As we work our way through small and always difficult to remember tasks at the coalface of marketing, we’re sure there will be additions to this list very soon, so maybe bookmark this page if you found it helpful.
We’re Google Partners, so if you’d like help with Google Analytics, Google Ads, marketing data analysis or digital marketing strategy, please email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199.
If you’d like help with digital marketing, ads management, SEO, copywriting, websites, branding or social media management… or anything else related to the internet and digital, then get in touch with us. We’re a friendly bunch.
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