Written by Brandon Kasper, Brandography’s Senior Manager of Paid Media
Managing Google’s suite of business tools can feel overwhelming, and even seasoned marketers slip into habits that quietly cost them visibility, security, or control. Here are the most common mistakes made across Google’s core platforms and what you should do to fix them.
1. Google Merchant Center #1: Not Having Enough Super Administrators
The issue that’s caused our clients the most headaches over the last six months. Merchant Center’s top-level access is the administrator level, but to connect integrations to Merchant Center, such as Shopify’s Google & YouTube app, Business Manager access needs to be set up at the Super Admin level.
If that Super Admin leaves the company (as we’ve seen many times before), loses access to their Google account, or simply becomes unavailable, you can find yourself locked out of the account entirely with no way to manage your integrations. Google’s escalation process for recovering orphaned accounts is slow, not guaranteed, and oftentimes, companies come away with mixed results.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Add at least two or three trusted Super Administrators to your Merchant Center account, including one tied to a company-owned email address rather than a personal one, so that access doesn’t disappear if someone leaves the company.
Read our guide on adding super administrators.
2. Google Merchant Center #2: Not Using Available Platform Plugins
If your store runs on Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or most other major e-commerce platforms, there’s a good chance Google has a native plugin or app that connects your product catalog directly to Merchant Center. Yet many merchants skip this and attempt to manage product feeds manually, or worse, through a clunky third-party workaround.
Manual feeds go stale. They require someone to remember to update them when prices change, products go out of stock, or new items are added. That lag can get your products disapproved or cause shoppers to see outdated information.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Check your e-commerce platform’s plugin store to see whether it offers an official Google & YouTube app or a Merchant Center integration. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce all have it. These plugins automatically sync your product catalog, handle feed formatting, and reduce the risk of disapprovals.
Bonus step: Link your Merchant Center account to GA4 to sync sales data and other reporting between platforms.
3. Google Analytics & Google Ads: Multiple People Sharing Logins
Marketing teams sometimes start out sharing one login for Google Analytics or Google Ads because it’s easier. It starts out harmless because there aren’t many people who need to share accountability, but in the long term, it creates serious problems.
Many times, that team grows, and shared logins mean you lose that accountability. You can no longer tell who made a change, who launched a campaign, or who accidentally modified a key setting, such as campaign budget or ad group pauses. If that one login is compromised, every platform it touches is exposed. What’s worse, if the account isn’t a companywide email and the person who owns that email moves on, everyone loses access at once.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Every person who needs access should have their own Google account with permissions granted at the appropriate level. Google Ads and Google Analytics both have great user management systems. Assign roles based on each person’s needs, and audit your user list regularly to keep it up to date.
For even more protection, require each user to have 2FA or Passkeys enabled on their account, and use domain controls in ad accounts to limit unauthorized access.
Bonus tip #1: Link your YouTube channel to Google Ads before Google does it for you.
Bonus tip #2: Change your data retention from 2 months to 14 months & Exclude Internal Traffic; we’ve seen businesses where 20–30% of reported traffic was employees.
How to Add a GA4 Administrator
How to Add a Google Ads Administrator
4. Google Search Console: Not Verifying Your Website at the Domain-Level
Many site owners add their property to Search Console using a URL prefix (e.g., https://www.yourdomain.com) rather than verifying at the domain level. This seems fine at first, until you realize what you’re missing.
URL-level properties only capture data for that exact URL variation. Traffic to http://, subdomains, or other protocol/subdomain variants goes untracked. You end up with an incomplete picture of how Google sees your entire site. This also affects how your data appears in Google Analytics when you connect GA4 to Google Search Console.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Set up a Domain property in Search Console instead. Google makes this really easy with plugins like Site Kit on WordPress or by verifying with analytics access. You can also set up a DNS TXT record verification, which your hosting provider or IT team can handle in minutes. Once the domain-level property is verified, it captures data across all subdomains and both HTTP and HTTPS versions of your site, giving you a complete, unified view of your site’s search performance.
After setting up Google Search Console, use it! Many businesses install Search Console and never return. Meanwhile, important pages become unindexed, canonical issues arise, pages are unexpectedly excluded, crawling problems go unnoticed, and new pages are accidentally added to the site and indexed without the user knowing. Use Search Console and know what Google actually sees on your site.
Bonus step: Link your Search Console to GA4 for more detailed reporting, all in one place.
5. Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business): Not Claiming Your Listing
Google often auto-generates a business listing based on publicly available information, and many business owners don’t realize their business is already appearing on Google Maps and Search without their control.
An unclaimed listing means anyone can suggest edits to your hours, address, or phone number. It means you can’t respond to reviews, post updates, add photos, or ensure your information is accurate and on-brand. Competitors, upset customers, and disgruntled employees have full rein to take advantage of this gap.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Claim your listing! Go to Google Business Profile and search for your business. If it exists, you can claim it right there. If it doesn’t, create the listing yourself. The verification process used to involve receiving a postcard with a verification code, but it has since shifted to using a video of your office, or sometimes it’s as simple as a phone call or email from Google. Once verified, keep your profile updated. Even claimed profiles can be changed by user suggestions or differences on your website, so check your listing periodically. Hours, photos, services, and responses to reviews all impact how customers and Google perceive your business. With AI becoming more dominant and fewer people visiting websites, it’s important that your listing appears accurately in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Bonus Tip #1: Add your business link to all customer confirmation emails to request reviews. It helps boost your ranking and community visibility.
Bonus Tip #2: Many businesses don’t realize customers can contact them directly through their profile when they select “Turn On Messaging”. If monitored properly, this can generate leads without requiring a website visit.
Bonus Tip #3: Even businesses without a physical storefront can still claim a Google business profile.
6. Google Tag Manager: Shared Logins, Version Control, and Publishing Processes
As with Google Analytics, using a shared sign-on for everyone at your company means you can’t see who is making changes. Not only that, but the lack of version controls and publishing processes means anyone could publish anything they want without prior approval. This can really mess up a website’s functionality or even lead to a lawsuit because your company didn’t realize something was being tracked.
OUR RECOMMENDATION: Always have users log in under their own accounts and use GTM workspaces, naming conventions, version descriptions, and a basic approval process before publishing. This keeps unwanted tags, code, and snippets out of the site and helps identify those who may be adding them, enabling your team to better align on best practices for your or your client’s website goals and objectives.
Bonus tip: When creating events in GA4, use event names that are easy to understand and won’t get lost when building reports.
Save Yourself a Future Headache
Most Google platform issues don’t stem from businesses making major mistakes. They happen because small setup decisions are ignored for months or years. Whether it’s adding additional administrators, verifying your domain, connecting the right integrations, or claiming your Business Profile, a few minutes of preventive maintenance can save hours of troubleshooting later.
