Google Analytics: Accounts vs Profiles

It is an important web management practice for web business owners to track the visitor traffic and visitor behavior on their website. If your web business depends on traffic and sales from search engine visitors, then it is extremely important that you continuously monitor the search terms and phrases your prospects are using to find you in the search engines.

Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking web visitors and behavior. Google Analytics is free and is an extremely powerful web traffic tracking tool. One of our standard Internet marketing practices to create a Google Analytics account for our search engine optimization (SEO) customers.

In Google Analytics, there are "accounts" and there are "profiles." What is the difference in Google Analytics accounts vs profiles? And why should a web business owner care about Google Analytics accounts and profiles? (There is one very important reason.)

Below are six Google Analytics "accounts vs. profiles" facts that web business owners should be aware of:

1. Google Analytic accounts and profiles have a hierarchal relationship. Accounts are at the top of the hierarchy and profiles are contained in accounts. An account can have multiple profiles. Profiles do not have accounts.
2. Profiles track individual websites. An account contains multiple profiles. Therefore an account can track multiple websites.
3. Each individual website should have its own account. It is (usually) not a good practice to combine multiple websites in one Google analytics account.
4. Google Analytics data is owned at the account level. Business owners therefore need to make sure they have ownership and access to the Google account that contains their analytic information.
5. If your website is managed by an agency, you should make sure that your Google Analytics data is not in a "profile" that is in an account that is owned by the agency. If this is the case then you do not own your Google Analytics data, your agency does.  Should you decide to move your web management you will probably lose your Google Analytic historical data.
6. You cannot move a profile to a different account. So you must make sure you own the Google Analytic account that conta ins your Google Analytic profiles.

Internet Marketing Bottom Line

In most cases web business owners just need to see their web traffic reports, and you don't need to be concerned with the technical differences of Google Analytics accounts vs. profiles.

The Internet marketing bottom line is: you need to make sure you own your Google Analytic data, and therefore you need to make sure you own your Google Analytics account.

Visit this Google Analytic help page for more info about Google Analytic accounts and profiles.