How to Create Saved Reports
One of the under-used features of Google Analytics is the ability to create a shortcut to your client’s favourite reports. Say you have a client who always wants to know which devices people are most likely to use when they enter their email for an email code. First ensuring that you’ve set up the event properly (!), the quickest way to look at this, natively, is to go to Behavior > Top Events > Search for the Event Label Discount Sign-Up, then apply a secondary dimension of Device Category.

It’s convoluted, and could be the reason why the client gets you to do it every time rather than look for themselves. The Saved Reports shortcut saves all your configurations from a report, including secondary dimensions and date range, and adds a customisable link under Saved Reports – meaning all the client needs to do now is go to Customisation > Saved Reports to see exactly what they need to see.


Creating Views and Filters
When configuring a client’s account, it is always safest to create multiple Views to ensure the integrity of the data. At a basic level, it’s advisable to include three views: Master, Test, and Raw Data.
By default, GA names the single view it creates on opening “All Web Site Data”. You’ll often find that this is the only View available when working with previously installed client accounts, and it should continue to be the Master view so that they don’t lose their earlier data.
You’ll need to create two new Views – Test, and Raw Data. Raw Data should have no filters applied, no bot exclusion – it’s simply a fallback that collects all data should something go wrong, and you need a backup. It’s also worth ensuring that the Raw Data view includes the Goals and Ecommerce settings from your Master view, too.
The Test view is where you should be testing all your filters – spam referrals, internal IPs, any search-and-replace – and let this run for about a week with the fresh data that comes in to test that it’s all working as it should be. Once that’s established, you can copy your filters across to the Master view.

How to Add Annotations
All too often I come across clients who note that “something” went wrong about a month ago and their traffic decreased and sales fell. A quick search in Google Analytics can often show the exact point that things went downhill, so I find myself going back to the client and asking what exactly happened on February 17th. If they come back with nothing, it’s back to me to look for any Google algorithm changes or penalties, but generally the client will remember a revamp; removing a chunk of pages; rejigging the checkout process; or some web disaster that was thought to have been fixed at the time. This is where annotations come in handy.
They allow you to literally make notes against the timeline reports that can alert either you or others who are looking at your reports that something happened on that day. Some excellent things to annotate are major marketing campaigns (including offline marketing, which can’t be found as a source); site changes (look and feel, providers, major content overhauls, checkout changes); site errors and problems; and anything else that you think might affect your site traffic or performance. There are two ways to add an annotation.
Add an annotation to a report
- Go to any report in the Explorer format (the basic view with dates down the bottom)
- Click the small down arrow under the dates
- Click + Create new annotation on the right
- Select the date
- Add your annotation (up to 160 characters)
- Choose whether you’d like it to be Shared (for anyone with access to that View) or Private
- Click Save.

Add an annotation to a View
- From the Admin screen, look at the third column for View and scroll to Annotations (under Personal Tools and Assets)
- Click the red + New Annotation button
- Select the date
- Add your annotation (up to 160 characters)
- Choose whether you’d like it to be Shared (for anyone with access to that View) or Private
- Click Create Annotation.

How to Link Search Console to Google Analytics
Unless you’ve been very busy concentrating on things other than Google Analytics in your digital agency (and if you have been, I know someone who can help with the GA side of things!), you’ll know that you can’t see the keywords that people have used to find a site. Instead, there’s a dirty big (not set) where those terms used to be. Sure, you might see an occasional branded search, but overall, there’s nothing insightful coming from the Organic Keyword dimension.

Though you’ll have more luck if you use Google Ads (and hence can see clicks on your ads via keywords), another useful tool is Google’s Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools). While Search Console is useful in a myriad of ways, you can connect the two products and bring your Search Console data into y9our Google Analytics reports. From this, you can see the search queries that show your site; how often users click on your site from those queries; and the average position your site appears at for those queries. As you can imagine, this is very useful data.
Connect Search Console with Google Analytics
- Go to Search Console
- Expand the main menu on the left
- Click to Add Property

- If you have access to the client’s hosting provider, enter the primary domain.
- If not, enter the main URL and protocol (ie http or https) and click Continue.
- You’ll be asked to verify your ownership of the domain. There are various methods, but the easiest is to use Tag Manager or Google Analytics snippet.
- Click Verify.

- In Google Analytics, go to the Admin screen
- From the Property column, choose All Products under Product Linking
- Scroll down to Search Console and click Link Search Console

- Click Add to add to select the right site
- It will show a list of all verified Search Console sites
- Select the site you’ve just added
- Click Save
- The dialog box will say “You are about to save a new association. Any existing Search Console association for this web property will be removed.”
- Click OK.
- Over the next few days, you’ll see data populating the Search Console reports (particularly interesting is the Queries report).
If you or your team need help with optimising Analytics data for your clients, get in touch today.