Management API Overview

This document provides a high level overview of the Google Analytics Management API Version 3.0.

Introduction

The Analytics Management API allows for programmatic access to the Google Analytics configuration data (Universal Analytics only). You can build applications to more efficiently manage large or complex Analytics accounts. Large companies with many properties can automate account setup. Even if you are building a reporting application the Management API provides you tools to navigate your account.

You can use the Google Analytics Management API to:

  • List all the Account, Property (Universal Analytics only) and View (Profile) information for a user.
  • Manage Properties (Universal Analytics only), Views (Profiles), and Goals.
  • Manage user permissions for an account hierarchy.
  • Retrieve a View (Profile) ID to use with the Core Reporting API.
  • Determine which goals are active and access their configured names.
  • Manage Links between Analytics properties (Universal Analytics only) and Google Ads accounts.
  • Manage Remarketing Audiences .

Before using the Google Analytics Management API it is important to understand the Analytics account structure. A Google Analytics Account is organized into several levels and the Management API provides a programmatic way of interacting with the entities at each level.

Using the Management API

To use the Google Analytics API you first need to create a project in the Developer Console. During that process you need to indicate the type of application you're building — a web application, a service application, or an installed application. The developer console will guide you through the steps of creating the appropriate authorization keys, as Google Analytics APIs use the OAuth 2.0 protocol for authentication and authorization. There are client libraries available in various languages. The client libraries will help you construct the appropriate flow to have a user authorize your application to access their Google Analytics data with the appropriate scopes.

Using these docs

This document and subsequent guides will help you initially get an application up and running and then the documentation will dive into the various topics which should help you interact with the API to perform such things as account, user, and data management. There is also a complete set of reference documents, which give details of every parameter of each API endpoint and include API sample code.

Next steps

Getting a working application with a new API always presents some challenges. The following section provides a set of quick start guides to help you get up and running quickly. You will need to pick a language and an application type:

Service application Installed application Web application
Java Java --
Python Python --
PHP -- PHP
-- -- JavaScript