The most frequently asked questions about Google Analytic’s property tracking ID get answered.

What is Google Analytics’ property tracking ID (and how do I use it)?

Google Analytics’ property ID is the identifier associated with your account and used by Google Analytics to collect the data.

It does not matter how you send data to Google Analytics—whether using the standard tracking code provided by Google Analytics; Global Site Tag, which was introduced by Google in 2017; Google Tag Manager or any other tag management system; Measurement Protocol or Firebase. If you use any plugin or embed the tracking code directly in the webpages, you always have to specify a property tracking ID to associate the collected data with the specific property in your account.

A Google Analytics property has the following structure:

The UA prefix stands for “Universal Analytics,” which is the current version of Google Analytics. The numbers that follow are the Google Analytics account ID. The postfix number is the index number of the property connected to the account. It is possible to have up to 50 properties connected to the same Google Analytics account, so the postfix can be from 1 to 50.

The Google Analytics property tracking ID can be used as a part of Global Site Tag, which is provided in the admin area of the account.

If you configure tracking with Google Tag Manager, the tracking ID is the only code you need from Google Analytics because GTM has a special tag to implement Google Analytics and takes care of the rest of the code.

Here is the Universal Analytics tag in Google Tag Manager:

Here is the Universal Analytics variable in which the tracking property ID must be provided and other settings can be configured:

If plugins are used to embed Google Analytics, they may require you to either type the property ID in the settings field or provide full tracking code, which will also include the property ID.