# Identifying companies with Google Analytics: what works and what does not

> Does Google Analytics show which companies visit your website? A comparison of web analytics and visitor identification and how the two fit together.

Quelle: https://whovisit.app/en/blog/identify-companies-google-analytics
Veröffentlicht: 2026-11-07
Herausgeber: Whovisit (ARAVILO, Innsbruck)

Anyone running a website in B2B sooner or later asks this question: "I have Google Analytics, don't I? Doesn't that already show which companies were on my site?" In short: no. The two tools answer different questions. This article shows where the difference lies and how to use both cleanly side by side.

## What Google Analytics is built for

Google Analytics is a web analytics tool. It answers questions at the level of the whole website: how many visits were there, through which channels did they come, which pages were viewed, how many visits end in a goal, such as a contact enquiry.

This can be seen in Google's documentation. The list of dimensions in Google Analytics 4 contains source, medium, campaign name, the default channel grouping and the manual UTM parameters ([Google, Dimensions and metrics](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9143382?hl=de), retrieved on 06.11.2026). We did not find a dimension "visitor's company" in the part of this list that we checked.

A requirement from the help pages fits this: customers may not send personally identifiable information to Google Analytics under the contract. It also states there that no IP addresses are logged or stored during data collection ([Google, Help on personally identifiable information](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=de), retrieved on 06.11.2026). It follows (this is our conclusion, not a statement by Google): without an IP address, the tool lacks the basis for assigning visits to a company network.

This is not a weakness. Google Analytics is meant to show you whether a campaign works and whether your site fulfils its purpose. You do not need company names for that.

## What visitor identification is built for

Visitor identification asks a different question: which organisation is behind a visit? That works only for visits from company networks. The IP address of a visit belongs to a network. This network has a registered owner. If the owner is a company or an institution, the visit can be assigned to that organisation. How this works technically is explained in the article [How does company identification work? The technology in 6 steps](https://whovisit.app/blog/firmenerkennung-website-technik).

Visitors from private connections, mobile networks or data centres do not become companies in the process. That is the price of the approach. It is part of an honest expectation. More on this in [What visitor identification can do and what it cannot](https://whovisit.app/blog/besuchererkennung-b2b-was-sie-leistet).

## The comparison in a table

| Feature | Web analytics | Visitor identification |
|---|---|---|
| Level | Whole website, totals and shares | Individual organisation |
| Reference | Visits, channels, pages, goals | Companies and institutions, their page sequence |
| Typical question | Which channel brings the most enquiries? | Which company looked at the pricing page? |
| Result | Reports and charts | List of companies with visits |
| Consent | Generally needed, depending on set-up and legal view | Must be assessed for each use, see below |
| Who analyses | Marketing | Sales and marketing |

The row on consent is deliberately cautiously worded. Whether and how you obtain consent depends on your set-up and on your legal assessment. You will find a sober assessment in [Consent or legitimate interest: how to decide](https://whovisit.app/blog/einwilligung-oder-berechtigtes-interesse). This is not legal advice.

## Using both together

The tools complement each other if you align a few things.

1. **Same UTM naming.** Both sides should see the same values for source and medium. If you set up campaigns consistently, you can later lay a company in visitor identification and the same channel in web analytics side by side. A visitor identification tool reads the usual UTM parameters and click identifiers from the address for this, regardless of what Google Analytics makes of them.
2. **Same consent category.** If both scripts depend on the same consent in the cookie banner, you treat visitors uniformly. In Google Tag Manager this category is usually called `analytics_storage`. For the Whovisit template there is an option for this, see [Consent in the tag manager](https://whovisit.app/hilfe/einwilligung-im-tag-manager).
3. **Separate purposes.** List both processing activities separately in the privacy policy: web analytics for reach, visitor identification for recognising interest among companies. Anyone who mixes both into one paragraph makes it hard for themselves and for readers.
4. **Separate analysis.** Web analytics answers "What works?", visitor identification "Who is interested?". Do not throw the questions into one report.

## When which makes sense

If the question is whether a campaign is worthwhile, use web analytics. If you want to know which companies are interested in your offer, use visitor identification. For many B2B sites both are useful, because they answer different questions in the same working day.

Before you commit, a look at the selection criteria in [Comparing visitor identification: 12 criteria for choosing](https://whovisit.app/blog/besuchererkennung-vergleich-kriterien) helps. And if you do not know what to do with the results, [Recognising buying interest: which page views count](https://whovisit.app/blog/kaufinteresse-erkennen-seitenaufrufe) shows how to read a company list. How such a report can be exported is described in the help centre under [Reading the report and exporting it as CSV](https://whovisit.app/hilfe/bericht-lesen-und-exportieren). An overview of the basic question is given in [Which companies visit my website?](https://whovisit.app/blog/welche-firmen-besuchen-meine-website).