Introduction to Google Analytics Settings - Google AdWords Learning Center

Objective: Learn to navigate the Analytics tab of your AdWords account, or view information for your Analytics account by visiting Google.com/analytics.

The Analytics tab of your AdWords account contains all of your Analytics report data, and provides access to account settings. In the green bar below the tab, you'll see two hyperlinks: 'Analytics Settings' and 'View Reports.'

This lesson will describe the Analytics Settings page in detail. To learn about viewing reports, please see the Reports topics.

Website Profiles

To the right of the View Reports link is a drop down menu that allows you to select the profile for which you would like to view reports. A profile is generally one complete set of Google Analytics reports for one domain, such as www.google.com. Each profile contains a specific set of users, goals and filters. Goals and filters will be discussed later.

If you are an account administrator, you can set up multiple profiles to separately track several domains, subdomains (like adwords.google.com), and subdirectories (like www.google.com/analytics/). You can have up to 50 profiles in your account.

The remainder of this lesson will focus on the information accessible from the Analytics Settings page if you are an account administrator. From the Analytics Settings link you can manage your website profiles, control which data is included in reports, and control who can access your Analytics account.

Website Profiles Area

In the Website Profiles area of the Analytics Settings page, you can:

Add new profiles

View reports for each profile

Edit profile settings

Delete profiles

Check the installation status of the tracking code and conversion goals

The status indicates whether the profile is currently gathering data, and whether goals have been set up. Goals are discussed later in this lesson, and in the topic on Goals and Funnels. These options are available for each profile in your account.

If you have more than ten profiles, there are 'Prev' and 'Next' links that allow you to move through the list. A pull-down menu controls how many profiles are shown at a time. You can use the search box to limit the number of profiles you see, or to find a particular profile. For example, if you have several profiles for different web sites, but you only want to see the profiles for one particular web site, type the profile name, or a portion of it, in the Search box and click the 'plus' icon next to the Search field. Clicking the 'plus' icon will show all profile names that contain the searched word or phrase. Alternatively, clicking the 'minus' icon will exclude all profiles containing that word, and include all other profiles. This is useful if you have several profiles for one website, and want to see all or none of the profiles for that website.

Profile Settings

When you click 'Edit' in the 'Settings' column, you are taken to a Profile Settings page.
From here you can edit:

Main Website Profile Information
Conversion goals & funnels
Filters

Edit Main Website Profile Information

When you click 'Edit' link in the upper right of this area, you are taken to a page that allows you to change the profile information. The Profile Name is the unique name you created to identify your profile. The Website URL is the primary web address that the profile is tracking; for example, www.AdWordsExample.com.
The default page should be set to the default (or index) page of your site. For example, http://www.google.com/ and http://www.google.com/index.html both go to the same page, meaning that index.html is the default page. Without the default page information entered correctly, these would be reported as two different pages, and your report data would be flawed. On most sites, the default page is 'index.html', but might be 'default.htm,' 'index.htm' or something else.
If your Analytics account is linked to a Google AdWords account, your time zone will be automatically set to your AdWords preference and you will be able to view, but not edit, the time zone in your Profile Settings. This ensures accurate reporting on your AdWords campaigns.

A query parameter is a special character in a URL that differentiates the main URL from a specific query. For example, in this URL, www.google.com/search?q=analytics, the query parameter is the "q" and the query term is "analytics." If your site uses unique session IDs or other query parameters in your URLs that you are not interested in seeing in your reports, you can easily exclude these parameters by entering them into the Exclude URL Query Parameters field. Separate each parameter with a comma.

The next two options apply if you conduct commerce on your site. If you want to track transactions, check 'yes' here. Learn more about tracking e-commerce transactions.

Next, you can specify:

The type of currency you use
The number of decimal places in the currency (for example 1.00)
And whether to show the currency symbol before or after the amount

Check the 'Apply Cost Data' box if you want AdWords cost data to be automatically imported into your reports. Click Save Changes when you're done editing these settings.
This returns you to the Profile Settings page.

Edit Conversion Goals and Funnel

The next section of the Profile Settings page allows you to edit conversion goals and funnels. A conversion occurs when a visitor completes an activity that you have identified as a goal of your site. This could be a purchase, a newsletter signup, a download, or any important page view. A funnel is a series of pages through which a visitor must pass before reaching the conversion goal. In your Profile Settings, you can set up and edit Conversion Goals and Funnels by clicking 'Edit' next to the goal name.
For more information, please see the topic on Goals & Funnels.

Edit Filters

In the next profile settings section, 'Filters Applied to Profile,' you can edit the filters that are currently applied to the profile. Filters are a powerful tool that enables you to manipulate the data stored in your account so that the data displayed meaningfully depicts your reporting objectives. A commonly used filter type is an Exclude filter, used to exclude certain data from your reports. For example, filters can be used to exclude irrelevant pageviews coming from within your own company and not from your visitors, or report only on a specific subsection of your site. You can edit or remove existing filters. Please refer to the topic on Filters for more information.

Edit User Access

The last profile setting section, 'Users with Access to Profile,' allows you to manage your users. A user is a person who can log in to your Analytics account.
When you edit an existing user's settings, you can change their first or last name and their Access type, which can be either Account Administrator or View Reports Only.

Account Administrators can make any changes to any of your profiles.
When you click the 'Add Users' link you are given the choice of adding a new user, or adding existing users to the profile. If you add a new user, you can specify their access type as previously discussed.

When adding users to your Analytics profiles, it is important to understand that they cannot access your AdWords account using their login email. To view your Analytics reports or perform Analytics administration tasks in your account, they must login to the standalone Analytics product at http://www.google.com/analytics.
Your Analytics users will not be able to access your AdWords campaigns, but will have access to your Analytics reports.

Once you have added a new user, you can view their level of access in the Report Access column.

Access Manager
Returning to the Analytics Setting page, there are two other control areas: the Access Manager and the Filter Manager. In the Access Manager area, you can see your total number of users. Click on the Access Manager link for more information on each user's access levels.

Here you can see the list of User Email Addresses, and you can use the Search field to include or exclude certain users. For example, entering "gmail" in the Search field and clicking the 'minus' icon will exclude all users whose email address contains "gmail." You can also delete users by clicking on the 'Delete' link. Clicking on the 'Edit' link next to a User Email Address enables you to edit the user's name and access privileges, and add or remove profiles which the user can view.

Filter Manager
The final section on the Analytics Settings page is the Filter Manager area, which shows you the total number of filters available. From the Filter Manager link you can edit or delete filters. When you click the Add Filter link to create new filters you can define the filter name, the filter type, and choose which profiles to apply the filter to. Please see the topic on Filters for more information.