How to Connect Google Analytics to Google Ads

Seeing what visitors do after they click your ads is the secret to turning average Google Ads campaigns into high-performing ones. If you only look at clicks and impressions, you’re missing the most important part of the story. This guide will walk you through exactly how to connect Google Analytics and Google Ads, explain the powerful benefits of doing so, and show you what to do right after you set up the connection.

Why Connect Google Analytics and Google Ads?

Linking these two powerhouse platforms isn’t just a "nice-to-have" technical step, it fundamentally changes how you can measure, optimize, and understand your ad performance. Without it, your ad data lives in one silo and your website behavior data lives in another. When you connect them, you get a complete picture of your return on investment.

1. Import Meaningful Conversions into Google Ads

Your Google Ads account can track conversions like sales, but what about the smaller, crucial steps a user takes before that? Google Analytics excels at tracking nuanced user interactions, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a PDF, or submitting a contact form. By connecting the platforms, you can import these valuable GA4 "conversions" directly into Google Ads. This allows you to optimize your campaigns for what truly matters to your business, not just the final sale.

• Smart Bidding Fuel: When you feed Google's Smart Bidding algorithms more accurate conversion data, they get much better at finding users who are likely to take the actions you care about.
• Go Beyond the Purchase: For B2B or lead-gen businesses, an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) might be a key PDF download or a demo request. You can set these up as events in GA4 and use them as your primary optimization goals in Google Ads.

2. See Ad Performance Directly in Google Analytics

Tired of flipping back and forth between Google Ads and Google Analytics tabs all day? Linking the accounts pulls your Google Ads cost and click data directly into your GA4 reports. You can analyze how users from specific campaigns behave on your site without ever leaving your Analytics dashboard. This makes it far easier to compare the behavior of paid traffic against your organic, direct, and referral traffic side-by-side.

3. Build Smarter Remarketing Audiences

This is arguably one of the biggest benefits. Google Ads lets you build basic remarketing lists (e.g., "all visitors"). Google Analytics, however, allows you to create incredibly specific and powerful audiences based on detailed user behavior. Once linked, you can sync these audiences to Google Ads for highly targeted remarketing campaigns.

Here are just a few examples of audiences you can build in GA4:

• High-Intent Users: Visitors who viewed more than 3 product pages, spent over 2 minutes on the site, but didn’t make a purchase.
• Cart Abandoners: Users who added an item to a cart but didn't complete the checkout process.
• Engaged Content Readers: Visitors who scrolled 90% of the way down a key blog post or sales page or watched an embedded video.
• Repeat Visitors: People who have visited your site multiple times in the last 30 days but haven't converted yet.

4. Deeper Insight into the Full User Journey

Finally, connecting these platforms helps you answer critical business questions that neither platform can answer alone:

• Which campaigns are driving the most engaged users (not just empty clicks)?
• Are visitors from my "Brand" campaign more likely to convert than visitors from my "Non-brand" campaigns?
• Which ad groups are attracting users who bounce immediately?
• What’s the true cost per acquisition when you factor in behavior across multiple site visits?

By marrying ad data with behavioral data, you can stop focusing on vanity metrics and start measuring true campaign impact.

Before You Link Your Accounts: A Quick Checklist

Before you jump in, a quick check on your permissions will save you frustration. To ensure a smooth process, make sure you have the following in place.

Admin-level Permissions

To successfully link the accounts, you need the right level of access:

• In Google Ads: You need Admin access to the account you want to link. If you have "Standard" or "Read-only" access, you won’t be able to initiate or approve the link.
• In Google Analytics: You need the Editor role (or higher) for the GA4 property you want to connect.

You and your agency or team must have these permissions. If you created both accounts, you likely already have the correct access.

Use the Same Google Account Email

For the simplest setup, make sure you're using the exact same Google login (e.g., yourname@gmail.com) to access both your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts. This allows GA4 to automatically find the Ads accounts you have access to. If different emails manage each platform, you’ll first need to grant Editor-level access in GA4 to the email address that has admin access in Google Ads.

Auto-tagging Must Be Enabled

Auto-tagging is the magic that allows Google Ads and Google Analytics to talk to each other. When it's enabled, Google Ads automatically adds a unique parameter (called a "GCLID," or Google Click Identifier) to the end of your destination URLs. When a user clicks your ad, this unique ID is passed to Google Analytics, allowing it to trace that user's session back to the specific campaign, ad group, and keyword that brought them there.

This setting is enabled by default on most new Google Ads accounts, but it’s always worth checking. You can find it in your Google Ads account under Admin > Account Settings > Auto-tagging. Make sure the box is checked.

Step-by-Step: How to Link Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads

With the prerequisites out of the way, the actual linking process is straightforward. We'll initiate the link from within Google Analytics, which is the recommended method.

1. Navigate to the Admin Section in GA4

Log into your Google Analytics 4 account. In the bottom-left corner of the screen, you'll see a small gear icon labeled "Admin." Click this to open the admin panel.

2. Find and Select "Google Ads Links"

The admin panel is divided into two columns: "Account" and "Property." Look in the "Property" column. Scroll down until you see the "Product Links" section and click on "Google Ads Links."

3. Start the Linking Process

On the next screen, you’ll see any existing links. To create a new one, click the bright blue "Link" button in the top right corner.

4. Choose the Correct Google Ads Account

Now, you'll need to choose which Ads account you want to connect. Click on the "Choose Google Ads accounts" link. A list will appear showing all Google Ads accounts for which your Google login has Admin access. Select the checkbox next to the account(s) you want to link, then click the blue "Confirm" button. If you don't see your account, double-check that you're an Admin on the account and using the same login email for both platforms.

5. Configure Your Settings

After confirming the account, click "Next." This brings you to a critical settings page where you decide how the data will be shared.

• Enable Personalized Advertising: This setting is POWERFUL. Toggling this on allows the audiences you create in Google Analytics (like "cart abandoners" or "engaged users") to be imported into Google Ads for your remarketing campaigns. In most cases, you absolutely want to leave this enabled. It is one of the primary reasons for linking the accounts. Just make sure your website’s privacy policy discloses your use of data for advertising purposes.
• Enable Auto-Tagging: This setting simply lets you confirm that auto-tagging is enabled on the linked Ads account. As mentioned before, this is essential. The link itself will try to enable it for you if it's not already on. It's best to leave this checked.

6. Review and Submit

Click "Next" one last time. You’ll be shown a summary of your choices: the GA4 property you're linking, the Google Ads account ID, and the settings you chose. If everything looks correct, click the final "Submit" button.

Congratulations! Your accounts are now linked. Keep in mind that it can take up to 24 hours for Google Ads and campaign data to begin appearing in your Google Analytics reports.

You’ve Linked the Accounts. Now What?

Linking the accounts is just the first step. The real value comes from using the newly shared data. Here are three things you should do right away.

1. Import GA4 Conversions into Google Ads

With the connection active, you can now start pulling your GA4 conversion events into Google Ads to use them for campaign optimization.

1. Log into your Google Ads account.
2. Go to Goals > Conversions > Summary in the left-hand menu.
3. Click the "+ New conversion action" button.
4. Select "Import" from the list of options.
5. Choose "Google Analytics 4 properties" and then select "Web." Click "Continue."
6. You’ll see a list of all your configured GA4 conversion events (e.g., generate_lead, submit_contact_form). Select the checkbox next to the events you want to use as conversion goals inside Google Ads.
7. Click "Import and Continue." These events will now appear as conversion actions in Google Ads, ready to be used in your campaigns.

2. Find Your Google Ads Data in GA4

To see your campaign data within Analytics, navigate to the Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report. Here, you can change the primary dimension to "Session Google Ads campaign," "Session Google Ads ad group name," or "Session Google Ads keyword text" to see performance metrics like Users, Sessions, Engaged sessions, and Conversions broken down by your Google Ads structure.

3. Create Your First GA4 Audience for Remarketing

Let's build a simple but effective remarketing audience.

1. In the Admin panel of GA4, go to the "Property" column and select "Audience."
2. Click "New audience" and then "Create a custom audience." Name your audience and define the conditions.
3. Set the conditions for "Recent engaged visitors who haven’t converted":
4. Set the membership duration to "30 days" and give your audience a descriptive name, like "Engaged Non-Converters - 30 Days." Click "Save."

Within a day or two, this audience will be available in your Google Ads Audience Manager, ready for you to target with a specific remarketing campaign.

Final Thoughts

Connecting Google Analytics and Google Ads moves you beyond basic click tracking to deeply understand how your advertising spend impacts user behavior and drives valuable conversions. It's a foundational step that opens up more intelligent optimization, highly targeted remarketing, and a complete view of your campaign ROI.

Even with linked accounts, stitching together a full-funnel report across multiple platforms remains a tedious, manual process. We ran into this problem all the time, which is why we built Graphed. Instead of wrestling with report builders just to see what’s working, we let you ask simple questions in plain English, like "Show me a dashboard comparing Google Ads spend vs. Shopify revenue by campaign for last month," and get an instant real-time visualization. It's the fastest way to get straight to insights without the reporting busywork.