Google Analytics account management is a highly flexible system that you can use to track multiple web properties and to set up reporting access for a variety of users. Before setting up an Analytics account or a new profile, read this document to understand how Analytics accounts and profiles work. This document defines important terms and concepts necessary to getting the most from your account setup.
If you need help with the steps involved in account setup, see the Account Administration section in the Help Center.
The following diagram shows two possible Analytics account configurations. Here, Liz has both a personal Analytics account and a company account shared with co-workers. Her company account tracks the company website, googleanalytics.com.
After reading the description for the concepts described in this diagram, you should have a clearer idea of how account management and profile access works in Google Analytics. The table below in Two Example Analytics Accounts completes the picture with a detailed scenario for the examples mentioned in the diagram.
The rest of this document describes in detail the components that make up Google Analytics account management.
Most Google products use Google Accounts to authenticate their users, such as Google Calendar, Blogger, and Gmail. A Google Account is a unified sign-in system that simplifies your experience with using multiple Google products—once you have signed in with your Google Account, you have automatic access to any other product that you have registered for. The Google Accounts sign-in form is made up of two parts:
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username@gmail.com. For example, Liz signs into Analytics using liz@gmail.com as her email address.Google Analytics also uses Google Accounts to authenticate users. The example in the Overview above uses the fictional user names, liz, joe, jim, and sue to illustrate sample Google Account user names.
In order to use Google Analytics, you must be signed in with a registered Google Account email address and password. Create a Google Account here. However, just having a Google account does not automatically grant you access to Analytics. First, you must register for Google Analytics, a one-time, simple process.
You can only access Analytics reports using a valid Google Accounts email address. You cannot sign in to Analytics with an email address hosted by Google Apps.
For more information on Google Accounts, see the Google Accounts Help Center documentation.
An Analytics account is way to name and organize how you track one or more web properties using Google Analytics. Each Google Analytics user has access to at least one account, either one they created themselves, or one that they were given access to by someone else. In each Analytics account, at least one web property (such as a website) is being tracked. As shown above, a Google Analytics account can be used to track a single web property, or it can track many distinct ones, depending upon the requirements of its use.
Conversely, a given web property should only be tracked in one Google Analytics account. Tracking a single web property in different Analytics accounts is not currently recommended. See Cookies for more information.
In any case, Google Analytics accounts are mainly an organizational feature of Google Analytics. You do not need to sign in separately for each Analytics account that you have access to. To use the example described above, when Liz signs into Google Analytics with her Google Accounts email ID (liz@gmail.com), she can select any of the Analytics accounts that she has access to from the administrative home page.
If you are using Analytics to track a single website, account organization is simple: you will have one account for your website. For setting up Analytics accounts to manage multiple websites, keep in mind the following:
With that in mind, consider the following common ways that an Analytics account might be used.
For example, you might have an Analytics account for your personal web properties that you name My Personal Account. In this account, you would track your personal website and your blog, which are separate properties. In this case, you install one tracking code snippet on your website pages, and use a different one for your blog.
You might also set up different Analytics accounts for different groups or stakeholders. For example, if you administer Analytics tracking for two companies, you would set up a separate Analytics account for the websites owned by each company. Since you might want to provide administrative access to individuals in each company, you would not want to expose sensitive reporting data between companies, so it makes sense to track the websites from different companies in separate accounts.
By default, an Analytics account is designed to track at least one web property. However, this is also a good way to set up Analytics if the website you are tracking is large and has a number of contributors interested in viewing reports across that property. In this way, the collection of profiles within an account all correspond to the same web property.
For instance, suppose you are the administrator for example.com, which has a number of sub-directories. If each department wants to track their section of the website independently from others, you can create distinct reporting profiles within the account that includes only data from certain sections. In this scenario, you install the tracking code for the website once, and any difference in reporting views are handled by the profiles and their filters.
When you create an account in Google Analytics, the account is provided with a unique ID. This ID is part of the tracking code that inserted in the source code for your website or gadget. For example, suppose the tracking code for your site uses the web property ID UA-10876-1 as part of its tracking code, like this:
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-10876-1");
In this string, the account ID is the central number 10876.
In Google Analytics, a web property is the cumulative set of pages on which a particular tracking code is installed. In the Analytics tracking code, the web property for a profile has a unique ID, which is a combination of the account ID and additional digits.
This web property ID links a web property to one or more profiles in an Analytics account. The ID can be found in the administrative section of the Analytics UI, or by searching for UA- in the source code of your web page. The web property ID has two parts:
The complete string (UA-XXXXX-YY) is referred to interchangeably as your web property ID or UA number. For example:
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-10876-1");
Here, UA-10876-1, defines the web property ID for account 10876 and it is the first profile for that account. A second profile for the same account that tracks an additional web property might use UA-10876-2 for the web property ID.
Each Analytics Account will have at least one profile by default. The profile for an Analytics Account is the gateway to the website reports: it determines which data from your site appears in the reports. When considering profiles and how they work, first remember that an Analytics account can track a single web property, or track many web independent properties, as illustrated in the overview above.
Next, remember that no matter how many properties you track in the account, each website must have at least one profile assigned to it. No data can travel from a website to Analytics without a profile that references the web property ID for the website.
You can create more than one profile for a given website, and use filters to provide distinct report views for the website. For more information on how to configure profiles, see the Help Center section for managing profiles.
When setting up tracking in an Analytics account, it is a best practice to make the first profile for a property a master profile. A master profile should have no filter to exclude or include sections of the data from the site being tracked. In this way, you will have a profile for the web property that contains all historical data since tracking began.
If you do not set up a master profile, but instead have profiles with filters excluding particular parts of your website, you will not have any data for the parts that have been excluded by the filter. For example, suppose you are mainly interested in tracking visitors to your site from the United States. If you set up a filter on a single profile that includes only traffic from the U.S., you will never be able to see pageview data for traffic from anywhere but the U.S.
If you want filtered profiles, we recommend setting up two profile types: one to track all sections of the website, and all visitors, and other ones more suited to a particular objective that excludes certain data. The master profile should also be the first profile you establish for your site.
When you set up a profile for a website, data tracking begins as soon as the tracking code is installed on the website and a visitor's browser loads a page. When you already have a functioning profile for an existing website, and you add an additional profile later on in time, the additional profile will not contain the historical data that you see in the profile created earlier.
For example, suppose in June of 2009 you set up an unfiltered profile for your website collecting all traffic for the site. Then in September of 2009, you create an additional profile called Sales that only collects data for the /sales directory of the website. If the users of the Sales profile attempt to retrieve report information for July of 2009, they will see no data for that time frame. The data does exist in the initial profile, but it cannot be copied over to the Sales profile.
Many large web properties have multiple profiles for a single web property, with filters to include or exclude particular types of data relevant to the business objective. Other users use filtered profiles to ensure that content is tracked only on a specific domain, to exclude certain traffic from the reports (such as internal traffic), or to replace difficult-to-read page query parameters with more easily visualized page URIs. For information on the types of filters available for profiles and how to set them up, see the Filter Creation article in the Help Center.
Unless you need to restrict user access via the reporting profiles, you might find it unnecessary to set up profiles purely for the purpose of viewing distinct sections of the site, or for making report viewing more convient for your account users. In many cases, your users can access the master profile and use the Content Drilldown menu to navigate to their section of the website. Once there, they can also use the Advanced Segments feature of Analytics to filter only the data they are interested in, and even use that as a means to compare metrics on their set of pages to the entire website. For more information on Advanced Segments, see the Help Center.
You share your Analytics reports with other people who have Google Accounts. Those users who want to view your reports must first enable their Google Account for Analytics access (see the main Analytics website for info).
When you share your reports with other users, you can control which reports they have access to by giving them rights to a specific account that holds the report you want to share. Once users have access to your account, you can also control which profile they have access to. So for example, if you want to let your colleagues view the Analytics reports for your gadget, but not for your blog or your website, you can give them access to your account, and then access only to the profile that you have set to track your gadget.
When your colleagues have access to the reports, the account name appears as a separate selection in the Accounts drop-down menu of the administrative interface. After they select the account from the menu, they will see only those profiles that you have granted them access to. In this way, you can control access to your Analytics reports at multiple levels. Additionally, it is common for Analytics users to have access to a variety of Analytics accounts, both their own and others.
This table provides a detailed scenario of the overview diagram in Overview of Two Accounts.
| Account Name | Profile Name | URL | Web Property ID | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| My Personal Account | My Blog | example.blogspot.com |
UA-10876-1 |
The personal blog is one of the web properties that Liz tracks on Google Analytics. She needs only one profile for this property, My Blog. The tracking code for her blog contains the web property ID, and that ID makes the association between her blog, and any profile that tracks it. In order to view reports for the blog, Liz selects the My Blog profile. The reports for My Blog show only user traffic for |
| My Website | www.example.com |
UA-10876-2 |
Liz has a second website with a domain that is distinct from her blog. She wants to keep separate tracking reports for each property, so the website has a unique web property ID. The tracking code for her site references this ID, and this ID makes the association between the website and the profile My Website. This profile is unfiltered, so the reports show all visitor traffic for |
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| My Gadget | 84632.gmodules.com |
UA-10876-3 |
In addition to a blog and a website, Liz also has a gadget that she likes to track. The gadget is hosted on the |
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| My Team's Account | Master Profile | www.googleanalytics.com |
UA-18988-1 |
Liz has access to the Analytics account titled My Team Account, along with other team members. As with any website, the web property ID is part of the tracking code installed on the website pages. This profile is the master profile and collects all visitor traffic for all parts of the Because profile access can be restricted by individual account users, only Sue has access to the reports contained in the Master Profile. The members of the Sales and Marketing team cannot view the reports in this profile since they have not been granted access. |
| Sales | www.googleanalytics.com/sales |
UA-18988-1 |
In this account, the Sales profiles tracks the same web property as the master profile—the User activity on other sections of the site is considered "outside" the site from the definition of the profile. For example, total pageviews would be only for this section of the site, and not for the entire Access to this profile is available only to Sue and the members of the Sales team, including Liz and Joe. |
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| Marketing | www.googleanalytics.com/marketing |
UA-18988-1 | Like the Sales profile, the Marketing profile tracks the the googleanalytics.com website, but its filter includes only traffic to googleanalytics.com/marketing. In this example, only Sue and Jim have access to the reports in the Marketing profile. |