Linking Analytics and Adwords together

What is Not Set in Google Analytics? While AdWords alone can help you identify the best keywords and ads to run, it fails to provide a comprehensive picture of what happens after visitors click on your ads. This is where Google Analytics comes in handy.^[1]

Besides giving you detailed reporting on ad spend and performance, Google Analytics also helps you track conversions from your paid search campaign. This is especially important if you want to convert potential leads into actual sales. For example, a visitor who has clicked on your AdWords ad may fill an information request form or subscribe to your newsletter.

However, while Analytics has a built-in integration with AdWords, it doesn’t have a unified integration with other marketing platforms such as Facebook, Bing, or Affiliate marketing programs.^[2] As a result, to gain deeper insights into how ad spend is directly affecting your website performance and conversions, you need to import cost data from these other ad networks into Google Analytics.

This can be a time-consuming process, and if you have multiple AdWords accounts, it could create issues in the way Google Analytics attribution is set up. For this reason, it is crucial to link your Analytics and AdWords accounts as soon as possible.

To do this, login to your Google Analytics account and go to the Admin tab. In the Property column, click Google Ads. Next, select the AdWords accounts you wish to link and click Continue.^[3]

Once you have selected all of the AdWords accounts that you want to link, the linking wizard will take over. It will guide you through the linking process and ensure that all of your AdWords accounts are linked correctly to your Analytics property.

Once the linking process is complete, you will be able to see this datlongside all other standard analytics metrics in your AdWords reports. This is a great way to track ad campaigns and ad groups, as well as individual keywords and ad variations. This will allow you to optimize your ad groups, keywords, and ads to improve campaign performance and conversions.^[4] You can also use this data to remarket your ads with advanced remarketing options like Google Analytics Remarketing and Dynamic Remarketing.

Google Analytics?

Using Google Analytics is crucial for gaining valuable insights and making informed business decisions.^[5] However, missing or inaccurate data can hinder these efforts.

One of the most common errors we see in View settings is (not set). This value means that Google Analytics has not received any valid information for that selection. It can be a big deal if the error is large enough.

Content Grouping

The triumvirate of content grouping, Google analytics and goal tracking is a winning combination for both content and website managers.^[6] It is an easy way to analyse the best performing content categories while also identifying areas that need more attention in future. Moz has a great article on how to make the most of your Google analytics data, but you don’t have to be a statistics expert to use the functionality to its full potential.

The most interesting aspect of this feature is that it allows you to see how your top performing pages are converting into new customers, and even better, it’s possible to link your Google analytics data with other Google products such as AdWords and Webmaster Tools. ^[7]For example, you can see which keywords are driving the most conversions and how long people stay on your site before a sale is made.

Hostname

Google Analytics collects IP addresses from all visitors to a site. This information is used for geolocation purposes, so that a website owner can see where their visitors are coming from. This is done in a variety of ways.^[8]

One way to make sure that only your hostnames are being collected in the analytics is by creating a filter. To do this in Universal Analytics, go to Admin, select your account, the respective property and view you want to block hostnames for, then click on Filters > Add Filter.

It’s important to remember that this filter will not prevent all hostnames from being collected, but it will block valid traffic for most of them. This is a good way to protect your site and your data from being misrepresented. It’s also an easy way to make sure that your data is accurate and reliable.^[9]

Whether or not you’re using a Google Analytics filter, it’s a good idea to check your hostnames in the explore hub. This will show you which domains are being collected in the analytics and how much of this is affecting your data. It’s also a great way to ensure that you’re only collecting data from the domains that actually belong to your site. This is a small and straightforward tweak, but it can save you a lot of trouble down the road. It’s always a good idea to take a few minutes and set up your analytics views correctly, so that you can ensure that your reports are reliable and accurate.^[10]

Landing Page

If you’re working with a client that uses display advertising on their website, you may be wondering why some landing pages are showing up as “not set” in your Google Analytics data. The reason is that Google Analytics hasn’t received the page from which the event hit was fired. This can occur for a variety of reasons, such as redirects or lost cookies. ^[11]Fortunately, there is a way to unlock this information by linking Google Search Console (GSC) to your Google Analytics account. This method will smash through the brick wall of unprovided data and give you the insight you need to optimize your campaigns.