Your agency wants access to your Google Analytics, and they’ve just said
“Stop! Don’t share your account d
etails “
The reasons not to share your Google (Analytics) account details with other people and companies are many, here are a few of them:
- You don’t know who’ll have access to it at the agency
- You can’t protect it without changing your account password
- If you change your account password then everyone in your company has to be updated
- If the agency changes anything that later becomes a problem it will be your account name that shows up in the Google Analytics Change History as the account name
So what to do instead?
Share access to another Google Account
This is easy to do and should be standard for all Admins when giving Google Analytics access.
- Get the Google Account Email Address the user wants to access with
- Open the Google Analytics > Admin > Property > User Management
- Click the Blue “+” sign button top righthand corner
- Select “Add new users”
- Add the Google Account email
- Set permission levels (see below)
- Click “Add” and you are done
What Are The User Permissions You Can Give?
Now there are different permission levels which are shown in the table below:
Permission | Description |
Manage Users | Can manage account users (add/delete users, assign permissions). Does not include Edit or Collaborate. |
Edit | Can perform administrative and report-related functions: add/edit/delete accounts, properties, views, filters, goals, etc., but not manage users), and see report data. Edit permission is required at the account level to create filters. Edit permission is required at the view level to apply filters. Includes Collaborate. |
Collaborate | Can create, edit, delete and share personal assets. Can collaborate on shared assets. Includes Read & Analyze. Shared assets include: Attribution models Channel Groupings Conversion Segments Custom reports Dashboards Segments Unsampled Reports |
Read & Analyze | Can see report and configuration data; can manipulate data within reports (e.g., filter a table, add a secondary dimension, create a segment); can create personal assets, and share them, and see shared assets. Cannot collaborate on shared assets. |
Finally, an email will be sent to the newly added user, so they know they now have account access.
Summary Of Adding A User To Google Analytics
- Don’t give other users your account details
- Give the lowest user permissions to do their job
- Manage who has access
- Review your users with access regularly (at least every 6 months)
- Check the “Change History” to see what users are doing