AdWords and Analytics Kept in Separate Boxes

Two accounts, two owners

The AdWords account was opened by the owner, or by an agency, or by someone who has since left. The Analytics account was set up by whoever built the website, under their own login.

Each is checked now and then, on different days, by different people. Neither has ever been connected to the other.

AdWords says a keyword had two hundred clicks last month at a good price. Analytics says the site had a busy month. Nobody can say whether those two hundred clicks did anything.

That question decides where the advertising budget goes, and with the accounts apart, it is answered by guesswork.

What each one sees

• AdWords sees searches, impressions, clicks and what each click cost.
• AdWords misses what happened after the click, unless conversions are tracked.
• Analytics sees pages viewed, time on the site and goals completed.
• Analytics misses the cost, and often which visits were paid for.
• Neither alone shows the cost of an enquiry, keyword by keyword.

The fourth is the one that does real damage. When Analytics cannot tell paid visits from ordinary search visits, it credits the ads' work to search, and the owner draws the wrong conclusion about both.

Paid visits that pass for search

A click on an ad comes from a Google search page. Unless the link carries a marker saying it was an ad, Analytics records the visit as google / organic, the same as a click on an ordinary result.

AdWords adds that marker itself when auto-tagging is switched on: a short code on the end of the address that Analytics reads once the accounts are linked.

Auto-tagging is a setting, and settings get changed. Someone tidying up addresses switches it off, or the site breaks it without anyone touching AdWords.

A redirect that drops everything after the question mark, such as one from the address without www to the one with it, strips the marker on the way in.

To test, open your landing page with ?gclid=test added to the end of the address, and check that it is still there once the page has loaded.

Why they stay apart

Linking needs one Google account with administrative access to the AdWords account and permission to edit the Analytics property. In many small businesses, no single person has both.

The web designer has Analytics under a personal login. The agency or consultant has AdWords under theirs. The owner has neither, or a password on a sticky note.

Sorting out access is the real first step. Each account should belong to the business, with outside helpers added as users, so linking the two is a matter of minutes rather than favours.

Linking them

In Analytics, the property's admin settings include an AdWords linking option. Choose the AdWords account, choose which views should receive the data, and save.

Leave auto-tagging on in AdWords. Within a day or so, clicks and costs start appearing in Analytics beside what those visitors did.

The goals you already have in Analytics, such as a quote request or a booking, can then be imported into AdWords as conversions, so the advertising account learns which clicks led somewhere.

Reading keywords by what visitors did

Once linked, the AdWords reports in Analytics fill in. The keyword report shows each keyword's clicks and cost along with its bounce rate, pages per visit and goal completions.

A bounce is a visit that viewed one page and left without doing anything Analytics can see. Read the rate beside goals rather than on its own.

A separate report lists the actual searches behind each click, often broader than the keywords you chose. That is where most surprises are.

Give it time. A keyword with a dozen clicks proves nothing either way, so judge on a month or two of data.

A worked example

A biodiesel supplier delivers blended fuel in bulk to farms, small fleets and equipment yards across a farming region, and sells it by the drum at its depot.

Its AdWords account was opened by the owner years ago and is now managed by an outside consultant. Analytics was set up by the web designer under the designer's own login. Nobody had linked them.

The keyword biodiesel had far more clicks than any other, at a reasonable price, and the owner was about to raise its bid.

Linking took minutes once the designer added the owner as a user with edit permission. The keyword report then told a different story.

Visitors from biodiesel mostly read the page explaining what biodiesel is and left. The searches behind them were largely about making it at home.

Requests through the delivery form came almost entirely from a few narrower keywords about bulk and farm delivery, each with a fraction of the clicks.

The owner lowered the broad bid, added words like homemade and recipe as negative keywords, and moved the money to the narrow ones.

Before raising a bid

The keyword with the most clicks is the one most likely to be bringing the wrong people, because it is usually the broadest.

Before raising a bid, check that keyword's goal completions and the searches behind it. If visitors bounce and nothing gets completed, a higher bid only buys more of the same.

Look at cost per goal completion rather than cost per click. A keyword that costs twice as much per click and produces enquiries is cheaper than one that produces none.

Remember the phone. Calls from call extensions show in AdWords when call reporting is on, not in Analytics, and someone who rings after reading one page looks like a bounce.

The counter-case

A campaign with a small budget and a handful of clicks a week will not give keyword-level answers for months. Link the accounts anyway, but judge the campaign as a whole until the numbers build.

A business whose enquiries come mostly by phone needs call reporting in AdWords to see the full picture, with Analytics as the second half rather than the whole.

Either way, the accounts belong together: linked, auto-tagged, and read by what visitors did, not by clicks.

The order to do it in

1. Find out who owns each account.
2. Add the business as an owner of both.
3. Link AdWords in the Analytics admin settings.
4. Confirm auto-tagging is switched on.
5. Test that redirects keep the marker intact.
6. Import your goals into AdWords as conversions.
7. Read goals by keyword before changing any bid.

Step two comes before the linking for a reason. Accounts owned by outsiders get linked, unlinked and lost as suppliers change, and the history goes with them.

For an online shop, the same comparison needs the sales figures covered in revenue missing from an online shop's Analytics.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.