Set Up Auto Tagging For Google Ads With Google Analytics

Introduction

Do you want to track your Google ad campaign performance? You may use the UTM tag, a simple parameter that you add to your URL, to track the campaign name, medium, and source. Google Analytics allows you to know where your traffic is coming from and which camping brought them to you. 

Now, you can change the process to track your Google ads campaign. Well, Google Analytics provides some features that automatically add a GCLID (Google Click Identifier) at the end of the final URL for all your ads. No need to tag every ad manually. So, now you may think about how to do this? 

You will learn those steps here. So keep on reading till the end of this article. 

What Is Auto-tagging?

This is a feature of Google ads that automatically adds a parameter to your URLs to help you track online conversions and provide a report on ad performance by using Google Analytics (a website tracking program)

Benefits Of Auto Tagging

• For auto tagging what parameter does google ads include in the destination URL that tracks the click of your customers? GCLID.  It will help you to understand which ad was clicked for each visit to your site. 
• It holds the information of the Google ads from auto-tagged URL to reveal which ads keywords brought the audience to your website. It will help you to understand if the ads are working or not. That’s why this feature is very effective during ad campaigns.

Pro Tips: you can use API; GCLID can provide more information from each click to the click performance report of the Google Ads API.  

Set Up Auto Tagging For Google Ads: One By One Step

Here, we will present the steps that you will follow to attach auto-tagging with your website URL. So, let’s start. 

Part 1: The step to link Google ads with Google Analytics

Google Adwords is an advertising machine that separates display advertisement and text into two systems: in display and search network. 

Content ads appear alongside the search results when the users enter the keywords. On the other hand, display ads shown on the website are called display ads.

• Step 1: You’ll see the tool icon on the top right bar in Google Ads. Click on the tool icon. 
• Google Adwords is an advertising feature. 
• Step 2: Next step is to click on the ‘Linked account” tab on the selection menu. 
• Step 3: You will see the Google Analytics bar and click on the Details button. 
• Step 4: Hit the link option to link the Google Ads account.
• Step 5: You can link multiple views, but only site metric is allowed to present the data. 
• Step 6: Click the settings section on the left side of  Google Ads. Then hit the account setting tab, and select the ‘Auto-tagging” option 

Part 2: The steps to link Google Ads account with Google Analytics

Before going over the step, first, make sure that you are an admin on both accounts and that you use the same email for both accounts so you can make the necessary changes. 

• Step 1: First, go to the Google Analytics navigation bar, and click on the admin section. 
• Step 2: hit on Google ads linking inside the property section.
• Step 3:  click the option of “ New Link Group”. 
• Step 4: Select the Google Ads account that you linked to in the previous step to Google Analytics. 
• Step 5: add the link title after selecting the Google ads account. It can be your company’s Google ads account. 

Finally, you have done it.

How To Check Auto-Tagging Turned On?

You may want to check that you may have successfully done auto-tagging. To do this, you have to go through some steps. Sometimes, auto-tagging is turned off by default. You can check whether it is turned on or not. Look below the following step:

• Sign in Google Ads account
• Hit the setting option in the left bar menu
• Click account setting from the dropdown option
• Hit the “ Auto-tagging” option.  
• You will confirm if the box is checked. Auto-tagging is on. 

Pros Of Auto Tagging

• If you enable Google auto-tagging, you do not need to manually tag any of your Google ads campaigns. 

• You can get all AdWords performance data to your Google Analytics account. 

• GCLID passes all the significant information about your ads campaign. 

• Google Analytics has five standard parameter values. 

• This process is error-free and provides the best service to the owner. 

Cons Of Auto Tagging

• You have limited flexibility in tagging definitions.

• This process is only reading Google ads. It means it can’t optimize third-party ads. 

You Can Do Manually Tag In Special Cases 

You can tag manually if your website does not allow arbitrary URL parameters or if you wish to use another tagging option instead of Google Analytics. To do tag manually and modify final URL ads.  

What If You Want Both Manual Tag And Google Auto-Tagging?

Well, if you want to access both processes to track your Google Ads campaign, then what happens? If you want to manually tag campaigns while you turn auto-tag on, auto-tagging can cause data dissimilarity. So what next? 

Don’t worry; we have the solution for this:

1. Enable Auto-Tagging option 
2. Use Tracking Templates to define campaign UTMs. 
3. The third step is. Click the option “ Allow manual tagging to override AutoTagging” in the property section under the Admin Section in Google Analytics. 

Now, manual UTMs set via the tracking template will overthrow GCLID values. 

Bottom Line

Now, you have learned how you can enable auto-tagging. Hopefully, this article has been able to meet your queries regarding Google Ads tracking. 

If you have any questions, you can ask by commenting below. Our experts will be there to reconnect with you. 

Finally, you can visit our website to learn about social media advertising, digital marketing, Google ads, and more.