Many search marketers have been waiting for Google Analytics data to show up in Google AdWords for a long time. In the past, we’ve had to toggle back and forth between Google Analytics and Google AdWords when we wanted to see bounce rates, average times on site, and page views per visit.

Depending on the goal of your PPC campaign, these Google Analytics metrics may be more or less important. For example, if you’re sending users to a landing page with a form and very few escape hatches (for lead-generation purposes), the bounce rate might typically be high. The user either fills out the form or leaves, as you’ve intended. However, if you’re promoting an e-commerce site and have a very high bounce rate or low average time on site, this may be an indicator that you have a disconnect among your keyword, ad, and/or landing page/website.

In order to see the data, follow these simple steps:

1. Make sure your AdWords and Analytics accounts are linked. If this isn’t the case, your organic traffic and paid traffic isn’t being separated, which could cause problems in your analysis.
2. After you’ve confirmed your accounts are linked, go to “My Account” and “Linked Accounts.”
3. Click “Google Analytics” on the left-hand side.
4.  Select the appropriate “profile”
5.  Now that everything is linked, simply go to “columns” > “customize columns,” and select “Google Analytics.” Add the columns metrics you want to see:

Opening up the AdWords platform to this data is a great step in the right direction to really help search marketers further optimize campaigns. However, I do think there are a couple other things that should be added:

1. Goal tracking – Goal tracking should be imported from Google Analytics to see how your goals are matching up vs. Google AdWords conversion tracking.
2. E-commerce tracking – Similar to goal tracking, being able to see Google Analytics e-commerce tracking would be helpful (you could add “revenue,” “transactions,” etc.).
3. Search funnels/multi-channel funnels – Imagine being able to see “assisted conversions” data within the Google AdWords interface down to the keyword. Rather than toggling back and forth between AdWords and Analytics/search funnels, you can see spend for each keyword, direct conversions and assisted conversions. Having that kind of information could bring advertisers one step closer to understanding attribution around PPC keywords.