This page provides 6 simple steps with images to share your Google Analytics accounts property with other internal or external users. Each step includes a screen shot to make following along easy.
But first, why should you even care? Sharing your direct access Google Analytics is very dangerous. In the worst case scenario, the person you share it with could remove your access to the system. If you decide you don’t want them to have access because they have turned out to be unreliable or even vindictive, then you have to recreate your password and go through that pain to keep them out. They could lock you out of your own page and hold it for ransom. In a more benign case, leaving such control so someone else means that if they die in a car crash, your account information may be unretreivable.
The proper way to handle to give someone access to your Google Analytics Account is to create a user in the system with specific permission levels. For instance, you could give them editing privileges or view only privileges. At the top level of permission, you can also give them the ability to manage and create users, which means they could delete you. I advise not giving that level of permission to just anyone.
Step 1
Go to http://analytics.google.com/ and login.
Step 2
If you have only one account and property, you can skip this step. Once logged in, make sure that the account that you want to share is visible as shown in the cropped picture below—see inside the inner red box. If it isn’t in view, click on the down arrow to the right of the box to select the correct property—see the blue box.
2a—if you have access to multiple accounts) After you click on the blue arrow there will be a popup page. At the top, pay particular attention to the section in the red box. If it doesn’t say “all accounts” the account you are looking for may be missing from the list of accounts visible on the page. (Select all accounts if don’t see the account you are looking for.)
Step 3
Once you have selected the correct account you can look at the menu on the left of the page. Now click on the Admin link on the bottom of the left hand menu.
Step 4
Select “Account Access Management” from the next window.
Step 5
In the popup form, all of your existing users are listed. If the person you need to add, is not listed click go to the top right hand corner of the form and select the blue circle with a plus.
Step 6
After you click on the circle with the plus, select add users. (The other choice is to add groups.) Then the Google displays the following form.
Before you enter a user name (email address), ensure that the person you are providing access to has a google account associated with that address. For instance, due to history and changes over time, the email people expect me to have associated with my Google Accounts is not actually associated with any Google Accounts like Analytics and it would be a mess for me to clean up.
Here is a brief description of what the different permission levels do.
- Manage Users (at the bottom) is the same as giving someone administrative access. If you give someone this level of access they could remove you from the account. Only provide this level of access to someone you truly trust.
- Edit allows a person to goals, views, and do just about anything except create users.
- Collaborate allows a user a limited amount of functionality, but they can create and share a few things. They cannot create goals, which means that they cannot define things like conversion rates as a conversion is when someone reaches a “goal.”
- Read and Analyze can view data and reports and not much else.
That is it. With these instructions you should be able to safely share your Google Analytics account with anyone you need to.