Where is Admin in Google Analytics?

Struggling to find the Admin section in Google Analytics? You're not alone. The move from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 shuffled the deck, and familiar settings have new homes. This article will show you exactly where to find the GA4 Admin page, explain the new layout, and walk you through the most important settings to get your reporting on the right track.

Finding the Admin Section in Google Analytics 4

First, the good news: getting to the Admin section is straightforward. While the inside looks very different, the entry point remains a constant. It's the one part of the muscle memory you don't have to retrain.

Your Quick Guide to the Gear Icon

The Admin area in Google Analytics 4 is accessed through a gear icon located in the bottom-left corner of your screen. No matter where you are in GA4 - be it the Reports, Explore, or Advertising sections - that little gear will always be in the same spot, waiting for you.

1. Log into your Google Analytics account.
2. Look at the navigation menu on the far left side of the screen.
3. At the very bottom of that menu, you'll see a cogwheel or gear icon labeled "Admin."
4. Click it. That's it!

Once you click the gear, you'll land on the main Admin page. This is where the real changes from Universal Analytics become apparent and where most people get tripped up.

Navigating the New GA4 Admin Layout: Account vs. Property Columns

If you're coming from Universal Analytics, you’ll immediately notice something is missing. The old three-column structure of 'Account,' 'Property,' and 'View' is gone. GA4 simplifies this to just two columns: Account and Property.

Views, as we knew them, have been retired. The filtering and segmentation that once happened in the 'View' column are now handled differently within GA4, primarily using Audiences and report customizations. For now, let’s focus on what these two main columns control.

Column 1: Account Settings Explained

The Account column handles the highest-level settings for your business or organization. Think of this as the organizational container. You'll use these settings infrequently, typically just during initial setup or when managing team access.

• Account Details: Basic information like the account name, country of business, and other business-related details.
• Account Access Management: This is where you grant people access to the entire account. Giving someone administrative access here makes them an admin for all properties within the account.
• Data Processing Terms: Important legal settings for GDPR and other privacy regulations.
• Account Change History: A log of all major changes made at the account level, which is useful for troubleshooting.

For most day-to-day marketers, you won't spend much time here. The real action happens in the Property settings.

Column 2: Property Settings Explained

The Property column is where you will do almost all your setup and configuration work in GA4. Your website or app is considered a "Property," and this column contains all the settings that define how data is collected, processed, and displayed for it.

This single column now houses controls that were previously spread across both Property and View settings in Universal Analytics. It’s dense, but it's where you'll find everything you need:

• Setup Assistant: A helpful checklist for getting a new GA4 property up and running.
• Property Access Management: Controls user permissions specifically for this property. This is ideal for giving agency partners or specific team members access without handing over the keys to the entire account.
• Data Streams: The pathway for data to flow from your website or app into this GA4 property. Here you’ll find your Measurement ID (the G-XXXXXXX tag).
• Data Settings: A critical sub-section for controlling data collection, data retention, and channel group definitions.
• Data Display: This is where you configure Conversions, Events, Custom Dimensions, and Audiences. It's the heart of customizing GA4 to track what's important to your business.
• Product Links: This is an essential area for connecting your GA4 property to other Google products like Google Ads, BigQuery, Google Merchant Center, and Google Search Console.

Top 5 Admin Settings Every Marketer Should Check Right Now

Now that you know your way around, where should you start? Certain settings are foundational for accurate and useful marketing analysis. Here are the five you need to review and configure immediately.

1. Master Your Data by Linking Your Products

Your marketing data doesn't live in a silo, and your analytics shouldn't either. The Product Links section is your first and most important stop in the Admin panel. Connecting GA4 to your other marketing tools provides a complete picture of performance.

Why it's important:

• Linking Google Ads allows you to see ad campaign performance and cost data directly in your GA4 reports. You can also import GA4 audiences and conversions into Google Ads for better ad targeting and measurement.
• Linking Google Search Console lets you analyze the performance of your organic search traffic, including which search queries are bringing users to your site - data you can't get anywhere else.

How to do it:

1. Navigate to Admin > Property > Product Links.
2. Select the product you want to link (e.g., Google Ads).
3. Click the blue "Link" button and follow the prompts to choose the correct account. Ensure you have administrator access to both GA4 and the product you're linking.

Do this for both Google Ads and Search Console to unlock a deeper level of insight into your paid and organic channels.

2. Check Your Data Streams and Enhanced Measurement

A Data Stream is simply the source of data for your property - your website, your iOS app, or your Android app. For most marketers, this will be your website. The settings here dictate what automated tracking GA4 performs.

Why it's important: Enhanced Measurement is a powerful feature in GA4 that automatically tracks key user interactions without requiring any extra code. By default, it tracks page views, scrolls (when a user reaches the bottom 90% of a page), outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads. You need to ensure this is enabled and configured correctly.

How to do it:

1. Go to Admin > Property > Data Streams.
2. Click on the data stream corresponding to your website.
3. In the "Events" section, make sure the "Enhanced measurement" toggle is on.
4. Click the gear icon next to the toggle to see what is being tracked. You can disable any specific events if they aren't relevant to your site. You'll also find your "Measurement ID" at the top right of this screen, which is the code needed for your website tracking.

3. Adjust Your Data Retention Settings

This is arguably the most critical and overlooked setting in any new GA4 setup. By default, Google Analytics 4 retains user-level data (like the data used in the Explore tab) for only two months. After that, it gets deleted, leaving you unable to perform detailed analysis on user segments beyond that short window.

Why it's important: If you want to analyze user behavior, build audiences, or compare user cohorts over a quarter or a full year, the two-month default is completely insufficient. You must change this setting to the maximum allowed window.

How to do it:

1. From the Admin panel, go to Property > Data Settings > Data Retention.
2. Under "Event data retention," you will likely see "2 months" selected.
3. Click the dropdown menu and change this to "14 months."
4. Make sure "Reset user data on new activity" is toggled ON. This means the 14-month window for an active user resets every time they visit your site.
5. Click "Save."

Note that this change is not retroactive. It only applies to data collected from the point you make the change, which is why doing this on day one is so important.

4. Control Who Sees Your Data with User Management

Controlling who has access to your data is crucial for security and organizational sanity. The Admin panel gives you granular control at both the Account and Property levels.

Why it's important: You want to give team members and partners just enough access to do their jobs, without giving everyone administrative privileges. For example, a content writer might only need "Viewer" access, while your main marketing analyst needs "Editor" or "Marketer" permissions to create audiences and configure conversions.

How to do it:

1. Navigate to Admin > Property > Property Access Management (or Account Access Management for account-level changes).
2. Click the blue "+" icon in the top right and select "Add users."
3. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to add.
4. Assign them a predefined role (Administrator, Editor, Marketer, Analyst, or Viewer). Each role has specific permissions for what a user can see and do.
5. Click "Add" to finalize.

Always try to grant access at the most specific level needed - usually the Property level instead of the Account level.

5. Define What Matters Most: Setting Up Conversions

A conversion is any user action that is valuable to your business, like a purchase, a form submission, or a lead. In GA4, any event can be marked as a conversion.

Why it's important: Without defining conversions, Google Analytics is just a glorified hit counter. By marking key events as conversions, you can analyze which campaigns, channels, and content are driving valuable outcomes for your business. It allows you to move beyond tracking just traffic and start measuring actual business impact.

How to do it:

1. First, you need an event that represents the conversion action. This could be an automatically collected event like a form_submit or a custom event you've set up, like generate_lead. A list of your collected events can be found at Admin > Data display > Events.
2. Once you've identified the event, navigate to the main events list at Admin > Data display > Events.
3. Find the event name you want to designate as a conversion (for example, 'sign_up').
4. On the far right, in the "Mark as conversion" column, simply toggle the switch on.

That's it. Within 24 hours, GA4 will begin reporting that newly designated event as a conversion across your reports.

Final Thoughts

Finding the Admin panel in Google Analytics 4 is as simple as clicking the gear icon in the bottom-left corner. The real challenge is mastering the new two-column layout and knowing which settings, like product links and data retention, you need to configure in the Property column to get reliable marketing insights. Getting these foundational pieces right is the first step toward useful, actionable reporting.

But configuring settings is just the start. You still have to analyze the data and build reports, a process that can be frustrating and consume hours of your week. We created Graphed because we believe getting answers from your data shouldn't be that hard. Instead of clicking through menus and wrestling with report builders, you connect your Google Analytics account once, then chat to build dashboards and find insights. For example, just ask, "Which campaigns are driving the most conversions?" and we build you a live-updating report in seconds. All you need is a question, not a data science degree.