How to Remove Accounts from Google Analytics

Cleaning up your digital workspace often means getting rid of old, unused accounts, and your Google Analytics is no exception. Whether you've sold a website, decommissioned a project, or are simply tired of scrolling past ghost accounts, removing them is a quick way to restore order. This guide will walk you through exactly how to remove and delete Google Analytics accounts, properties, and users, ensuring you do it safely and without losing essential data.

First, Understand the Google Analytics Hierarchy

Before you click any red buttons, it’s vital to understand how Google Analytics organizes your data. Everything is structured in a simple hierarchy, and deleting something at a high level will remove everything underneath it.

• Account: This is the highest level, representing your company or organization. A single Google login can have access to up to 100 Analytics accounts.
• Property: Housed within an account, each property represents a specific website or app you're tracking. You can have multiple properties under one account (for example, one for your main website and another for your mobile app).
• View: Each property can have multiple views. A view is a specific lens through which you see your data. For instance, you might have one "All Website Data" view, another that filters out internal traffic from your company, and a third for tracking only blog traffic.

Understanding this is critical. If you delete an entire account, you’ll also lose all the properties and views within it. If your goal is just to stop tracking a single defunct blog, you'll likely want to delete the property instead of the entire account.

Remove or Delete? What’s the Difference?

The terms "remove" and "delete" often get used interchangeably, but in the context of Google Analytics, they mean very different things.

• Removing Access: This typically refers to revoking permissions — either for yourself or for another user. The account and its data remain perfectly intact, you (or the other user) just can't see it anymore. This is ideal if you're a freelancer whose contract with a client has ended.
• Deleting (Moving to Trash Can): This is the more permanent action. When you delete a Google Analytics account or property, you’re moving it to the "Trash Can," where it will be permanently erased after a waiting period. This is what you do when you want the data gone for good.

Let's walk through how to do each of these things, starting with the least permanent actions.

How to Remove Another User’s Access to Google Analytics

Hired a contractor who no longer needs access? Time for some simple user management cleanup. You can revoke access at the account, property, or view level, depending on what they were allowed to see. You'll need Administrator permissions to do this.

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Click on the Admin icon (the gear icon) at the bottom left of your screen.
3. In the first column, make sure the correct Account is selected from the dropdown menu.
4. To remove a user from the entire account, click on Account Access Management. To remove them from just one specific site, select the Property in the second column and click Property Access Management.
5. You’ll see a list of all users with access. Find the person you want to remove.
6. Click the three vertical dots on the far right of their user row and select Remove access.
7. A confirmation pop-up will appear. Click Remove.

That's it. Their access is immediately revoked, and the analytics account will no longer appear in their list.

How to Remove Yourself from a Google Analytics Account

If you want to remove an old client's or employer's account from your own list, the process is slightly different. When you leave, permissions need to be transferred to someone else if you are the only one with "Manage Users" permission.

Important: If you are the only user with full administrative privileges, Google Analytics won’t let you remove yourself until you assign those same privileges to another user. This is a safety measure to prevent an account from being left orphaned without an admin.

1. Navigate to the Admin section of the account you wish to leave.
2. Go to Account Access Management.
3. You’ll see your own email in the list. On the far right, click the three dots and select Remove myself.
4. Confirm the action in the pop-up window.

Once confirmed, the account will disappear from your GA interface instantly. The account data remains untouched, you simply can't access it anymore.

How to Permanently Delete a Google Analytics Account

Alright, this is the main event. Deleting an account is permanent and should be done with care. Use this option if you're certain you will never need the historical data associated with the account and all its properties ever again.

Heads-up: To perform this action, you must have the Administrator role for the account.

Step 1: Check your backup

Before you delete anything, ask yourself: "Is there any data in here I might possibly need later?" If the answer is yes, take a few minutes to export key reports as CSVs or PDFs. Some good ones to save include:

• Audience Overview (to see historical traffic trends)
• Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels (to see where your traffic came from)
• Behavior > Site Content > All Pages (to see your most popular pages)

This history could be valuable down the road, and once it's gone, it's gone.

Step 2: Move the Account to the Trash Can

1. Sign in to Google Analytics and go to the Admin page.
2. In the Account column, use the dropdown to select the account you want to eliminate.
3. After selecting it, click on Account Settings right below the dropdown.
4. At the top right corner of the Account Settings screen, you’ll see a button that says Move to Trash Can. Click it.
5. Google will show you a very stern warning screen explaining exactly what you're about to do. Read it carefully. It confirms which account is being deleted and reminds you that everything inside it will be permanently gone after 35 days.
6. If you are sure, click the big blue Trash account button to confirm.

You’ll be redirected to your Analytics homepage, and the deleted account will be gone from your list.

What about Deleting a Property Instead?

Sometimes you don’t need to get rid of an entire account. If your company still exists but you shut down a specific website or app, you only need to delete the property associated with it.

The process is nearly identical:

1. Go to the Admin page.
2. Select the correct Account and, in the middle column, select the Property you wish to delete.
3. Click on Property Settings in the Property column.
4. In the top right, click Move to Trash Can.
5. Read the warning and, if you're ready, click Trash property.

This removes the single property while leaving the rest of your account and its other properties alone. This is often a much safer and more appropriate action than deleting the entire account.

I Made a Mistake! Can I Restore a Deleted Account or Property?

Accidentally deleted the wrong thing? Don't panic just yet. Google gives you a grace period.

When you delete an account or property, it goes into the Trash Can for 35 days. During this time, you can restore it completely with all its historical data intact. If you don't take action within 35 days, then it’s permanently deleted from Google's servers, and there’s no getting it back.

To restore something from the Trash Can:

1. Go to the Admin page.
2. In the Account column, click on Trash Can.
3. You'll see a table listing any accounts or properties you've recently deleted and the date they are scheduled for permanent deletion.
4. Select the item you want to restore by checking the box next to it.
5. Click the Restore button.

The account or property will be immediately reinstated with all its settings and data preserved.

Final Thoughts

Managing your Google Analytics setup, whether that means removing users or deleting old accounts, is a straightforward housekeeping task when you understand the platform's structure. Following these steps ensures your workspace stays clean and relevant, allowing you to focus on the data that truly matters for your active projects.

While an organized GA account is a great start, the ultimate goal is getting quick answers from all your data, not just one platform. We built Graphed because manually pulling reports from Google Analytics, then Shopify, then Facebook Ads is a nightmare. Our platform connects all your data sources so you can build dashboards and ask questions in plain English — like "Which Facebook campaign is driving the most sales on Shopify?" — and get custom reports in seconds. It saves countless hours you'd otherwise spend wrestling with data.