5/18/2020 The Analytics account structure - Analytics Help

The Analytics account structure

Now that you know how data gets collected, let’s look at how Google Analytics accounts are
organized.

All of your Google Analytics accounts can be grouped under an “Organization,” which is optional. This
allows you to manage multiple Google Analytics accounts under one grouping.

Large businesses or agencies could have multiple accounts, while, medium to small-sized businesses
generally (only) use one account. When you create an account, you also automatically create a
property and, within that property, a view for that account. But each Analytics account can have
multiple properties and each property can have multiple views. This lets you organize your Analytics
data collection in a way that best re ects your business.

The Google Analytics Account determines how data is collected from your websites and manages who
can access that data. Typically, you would create separate Analytics accounts for distinct businesses
or business units.

Each Google Analytics account has at least one “property.” Each property can collect data
independently of each other using a unique tracking ID that appears in your tracking code.

You may assign multiple properties to each account, so you can collect data from different websites,
mobile applications, or other digital assets associated with your business. For example, you may want
to have separate properties for different sales regions or different brands. This allows you to easily
view the data for an individual part of your business, but keep in mind this won’t allow you to see data
from separate properties in aggregate.

View Se ings
Just as each account can have multiple “properties,” each property can have multiple “views.” You can
use a feature called Filters in your con guration settings to determine what data you want to include in
the reports for each view.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6382993?hl=en 1/3
5/18/2020 The Analytics account structure - Analytics Help

For example, The Google Store sells merchandise from their website across different geographical
regions. They could create one view that includes all of their global website data. But if they wanted to
see data for individual regions, they could create separate views for North America, Europe, and Asia. If
the Google Store wanted to only see data for external tra c (that didn’t include their own store
employees), they could set up a view that ltered out internal tra c based on IP address.

The view level also lets you set Google Analytics “Goals”. Goals are a valuable way to track
conversions, or business objectives, from your website. A goal could be how many users signed up for
an email newsletter, or how many users purchased a product. We’ll discuss Goals and Conversions in a
later lesson. Be thoughtful when setting up your accounts, properties, and views, because you can’t
change data once it’s been collected and processed. by Google Analytics.

Before we move on to user access permissions, there are a couple important things to note about
views: 

1. New views only include data from the date the view was created and onwards. When you create a
new view, it will not include past data.
2. If you delete a view, only administrators can recover that view within a limited amount of time.
Otherwise, the view will be permanently deleted.

User Permissions
You can assign permissions to other users at the account, property, or view level. Each level inherits
permissions from the level above it.
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6382993?hl=en 2/3
5/18/2020 The Analytics account structure - Analytics Help

For example, if you have access to an account, then you have the same access permissions to the
properties and views underneath that account. But if you only have access permissions for a view, then
you won’t have permission to modify the property or account associated with that view.

By clicking “Admin”, Google Analytics lets you set user permissions for: “Manage Users,” “Edit,”
“Collaborate,” or “Read and Analyze.”

• “Manage Users” lets users add or remove user access to the account, property, or view.
• “Edit” lets users make changes to the con guration settings.
• “Collaborate” allows users to share things like dashboards or certain measurement settings.
• And nally, “Read and Analyze” lets users view data, analyze reports, and create dashboards, but
restricts them from making changes to the settings or adding new users.

How you con gure your organizations, accounts, properties, and views can affect how your data gets
collected. Be thoughtful when setting up your Google Analytics implementation, and make sure you
align your properties and views of the data you collect with your overall business structure.

Was this helpful?

Yes No

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6382993?hl=en 3/3