How to Add a user to Google Analytics

instead of giving an SEO consultant your Google Account

Whether you are working with a freelancer on Fiverr or an agency like Ordinary Marketing, you should never give out your password to your Google account. Even when I’m designing a website for a friend that I’ve known for years, I still pass them the keyboard as we sit in the design phase and ask them, “Type in your password here.”

Here are the instructions on how to correctly share your Google Analytics account. You should share it because you should own it. If you change web developers or ad agencies, you want to take your analytics with you. Any agency that wants to keep your data is not playing nice.

I’ve worked with clients in my own hometown of Evansville, Indiana who couldn’t change web designers because the web design company said they, the web designer, owned all of the site content as Intellectual Property! That meant for the client to change web developers, they would have to either pay a huge exit fee and buy all of the content, or start from SCRATCH with no help from their previous web company. Terrible. Especially in a small town like Evansville.

Know what you are buying when you hire an ad agency! But that’s a rant for another day…

Here are the directions to manage users on Google Analytics from Google. I tell you how to just add somebody like me to GA4 in the directions below.

Add Me to your Google Analytics

You can add as many users as you need. To add a new user to an account/property/view:

Sign in to Google Analytics.
Click Admin (in the bottom left), and navigate to the desired account/property/view.
In the Account, Property, or View column (depending upon whether you want to add users at the account, property, or view level), click Access Management.
In the Account permissions list, click +, then click Add users.
Enter the email address for the user’s Google Account. Mine is [email protected] (did you know you can have a Google account with your business email? It doesn’ thave to be a Gmail.)
Select Notify new users by email to send a message to the user.
Select the permissions you want. You can make me an Admin, but depending on what kind of company you’re working with, you might want them to be an Editor, Marketer, Analyst, or Viewer. Learn more about permissions from Google here .
Click Add.

Now that you’ve shared your Google Analytics, what happens

The new user you just added is going to get an email to accept your invitation. Kind of fancy, huh? They will then have access to your Google Analytics. This is necessary when doing an SEO Audit or planning out your content marketing for the future.

The best part about this is that you are still the owner of your own Google Analytics account. If you change marketing consultants or agencies, you want to continue using this same account. If you don’t, you’ll lose all kinds of historical data about how your site is used.

I’ve heard of web design companies immediately wiping out the old GA4 account and putting their own Google Analytics code in there. Don’t let them do it! Historical data is critical to getting an accurate ROI report on your SEO efforts!

How to add a user to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a necessary tool to measure and track how your website is doing specifically on Google Search. If you have it running on your site, you’ll need to give your SEO consultant access to it. But DON’T EVER GIVE OUT YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT. Add them to your admin area instead.

You can go there directly with this link.

Here is how you add me to your Google Search Console:

Log in to Google Search Console: Access your Google Search Console account at search.google.com/search-console.

Select the Property: If you have access to multiple properties, select the specific website property you want to share on the left side.

Navigate to Settings: Click on “Settings” in the left-hand navigation near the bottom.

Open Users and Permissions: Click on “Users and permissions” within the settings.

Click Add User: Locate and click the “Add user” button.

Enter User’s Email: Input the Google account email address of the user you want to add. (Like [email protected])

Choose Permissions: Select the appropriate permission level for the user. Options include Owner, Full, and Restricted, says Google Help.

Finish the job: Click the “Add” button to finalize the process.

Once you add me to your Google Search Console, I’ll be able to see how many people came to your website via Google, which pages rank the highest for various keywords, and any surprises in your search traffic.

Adding users to Google properties is the right way to do it

You can see that adding people to your Google Analytics and Google Search Console is the way to go. Don’t give out those gmail addresses and passwords!

If you don’t even have GA4 or GSC installed on your site in the first place, get that going as soon as possible. That is a critical step in measuring your marketing efforts.

How to Add a user to Google Analytics

instead of giving an SEO consultant your Google Account