Ahem, you will be assimilated.
Yeah, trying to get my igoogle and adsense under the same profile as my google profile..
Microsoft live and webmastertools is just as bad...
I feel for you netmeg..

netmeg, since you deal with so many sites and clients, don't you have a google representative to communicate with on a personal level?
Couldn't him or her help you out with this issue?

Tried with several. Unfortunately no one person deals with every one of the various aspects.

I did change it over (from personal to business) and had to go through it all manually as well.

I did drag my feet a month or so with canceling the old account as they didn't even offer to let me have two accounts at the same time during the change-over. The official answer was that they wanted me to first remove ads and all stuff from the sites, and then cancel the old account, and only then apply for the new one, and then restore adds to the sites again.

All they needed to do was add my company name on the bank account where the money needed to go ... (International publisher and they don't even need an EIN from me.)

After you go through it, you run into new issues like that they want you to receive a PIN code in snail mail and need to enter that on the website (wonder what they hope to check in reality? My ability to receive snail mail at an address I specify?). Means nothing out here, I can create imaginary addresses and get the snail mail for it easily.

Seems like it's the typical corporate setup where they target a certain profile and can't seem to imagine the needs of their business partners that don't fit that profile for 100%.

Interesting enough my original account was so old that originally it wasn't either personal nor business, it was just an account.

The downside to it all is that you loose access to statistics and reports.

Hang in there, in the end it'll pass.

And who knows maybe somebody in the 'plex might go "oh if we keep the date it changed in this table, we could allow them, it isn't even a big change at all."
But then they're employees of Google, what do they know what is involved in starting/owning a business around the world?

Is it hard to do this for Google? Well: let's take a look at amazon.com: no problem at all to change where the payments go (medieval paper check, but no problem whatsoever in changing it).

I have watched this all unfold via Netmeg's twitter stream for the last few weeks, and have seen you having multiple 'head meet desk' moments every single day. For a bunch of people with a lot of brains between them, this implementation is just plain dumb. Why is something so simple, just not available?

Want this the other way round? A group of us were using one PC to access YouTube the other week. The person logging into YouTube had the same first name as the owner of the PC, but a different surname and different email address.

After logging into YouTube, a screen appeared offering to join this YouTube log-in to an existing Google Account. The button to enable that was *almost* clicked by the person logging in to the machine. That would have joined accounts owned by two different people together! Luckily I stopped the button click just in time.

After that, we could not shake off this prompt, and ended up deleting all cookies and all stored passwords for all Google and Google-owned properties just so that we could log in to YouTube without being hassled by this dumb assumption that wanted us to link the accounts continually popping up a box to enable it.

Analyitcs: you can probably do something clever with allowing the new account to view all stats for the old account? I think that would be helpful...

I'm not really sure what you mean, lea. I can still use the old analytics account, but I can't link my new adsense to it.

So far I can't get my old search working with the new account at all. No support for this of course, and the forum is full of people with search problems going back years who were never answered.

By the way, NONE of the other ad networks, affiliate networks, domain companies, advertising - NOT ONE had a problem just letting me change my contact information and my tax id number. It's just Google.

And my final email plea for help was just returned to me by AdSense support saying due to nature of my problem they can't provide individual support.

So it looks like I'm out of the Google business.

[edited by: netmeg at 8:52 pm (utc) on May 2, 2009]

Netmeg, thanks for the warning. I can imagine that at the outset it all sounded such a great idea. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, persevere and it will all work out.

re: Analytics (which I swear I can spell properly)
In the user profile section there is a 'user manager' section.
Here you can let other users have full control over the account.
If in the old analytics user's account you gave the new user's account full control, you might find it all matches up.
Worth trying.
I'm not sure this will work for adsense-analytics integration, but worth a try.

Can't believe Google is unable to just make a few quick changes to allow this stuff... :(

Time for Adsense Advisor to step in and put it on the corporate agenda.

I don't see why you can't get your accountant to make your sole-proprietorship a middleman/broker/whatever to your own corporation, and passthrough the earnings, but I'm not an accountant.

Exact thing happened to me. It was an absolute pain in the ass. My analytics is still on my old account and I have to allow my new email address access to view the reports without switching accounts.

Something similar is happening to a friend right now, just not as complicated: Old Analytics account, newer Adsense account, these two are currently separated and we are trying to merge them with the link invitation to "integrate adsense clicks to analytics reports". In Google's help pages, they tell us to add the newer Adsense account's email address as an administrator in the user management section of the old Analytics account before attempting to integrate it, but to no avail. It won't detect it.

We discussed creating a new Analytics account for his Adsense account but the idea of losing years of traffic stats is rather disheartening.

"I don't see why you can't get your accountant to make your sole-proprietorship a middleman/broker/whatever to your own corporation, and passthrough the earnings, but I'm not an accountant." Neither am I, but that's what I did a couple years ago. No muss, no fuss. Same Google account since 2003.

I don't think it's always as easy as acting as "middleman/broker/whatever". In my case I really needed to get rid of the foreign checks on my personal name.

If it is that hard to switch accounts by the same person that runs both, imagine what a spouse with much less knowledge has to go through after the account owner passes away. (no matter how much documentation you leave behind)

AdSense once promised that they would fully cooperate to make the transition smooth, I can just imagine my wife dealing with such non helpful support emails. This is a serious shortfall and a promise that apparently will never be kept.

and the real question is *WHY*?
Why is this so difficult?
All that is involved is a simple name & bank detail change - I haven't come across another affiliate scheme where this is an issue.
*Why* have Google set this up as 'too hard'?

(Especially when they were the ones who pioneered the easy 'nup, I don't do any business with the US so you don't need to withhold my taxes' one-click signup? (A blessing for foreigner webmasters, in case you aren't aware. The number of schemes that require a W8-BEN, which I never fill out as I can't see if I am answering legally or not!))

I don't think it's always as easy as acting as "middleman/broker/whatever". In my case I really needed to get rid of the foreign checks on my personal name.

---

Aha. I didn't realize you were non-US.

If it is that hard to switch accounts by the same person that runs both, imagine what a spouse with much less knowledge has to go through after the account owner passes away. (no matter how much documentation you leave behind)

---

OMG I hadn't thought about that hassle, I KNOW my wife would be up a creek without a paddle trying to fix things with G.

Now I'm bothered by this issue.

[edited by: RonS at 12:49 am (utc) on May 4, 2009]

This really needs to be propelled to the top of Adsense Advisor's concerns. It cannot be that unusual for someone (OK, me) to start a little site in their own name that gets bigger and more profitable to the point where tax implications arise. What would be the problem with Google's simply allowing you to change the tax ID? I understand that they may want to verify that the account has not been sold but surely there are other ways to deal with that.

Oh just so you know, about my friend, we had to use the original email he opened the adsense account with instead of the new gmail one to add as an admin in the analytics account before we could associate it. It seems to work.

Wasn't this one of the kinds of problems that IT was supposed to make it easy and simple to handle?

You can add me to the list who would like to see this issue resolved. I am in the process of incorporating and I'm finding this thread incredibly disturbing.

In terms of the Adsense to Analytics connection it is absolutely correct that you have to have someone internally at Google link your accounts in certain cases.

I was at ADSPACE last month and a Google representative went in and linked my Adsense account with my Analytics account. It could not have been done by me.

I had the same scenario of an old Analytics account with a "newer" adsense account.

Hope this helps.

[edited by: martinibuster at 10:33 pm (utc) on May 4, 2009]
[edit reason] Removed promotional links [/edit]

netmeg, another consideration, get your will in order at the same time. Can you imagine your loved ones trying to have things changed without you when you are having this much difficulty yourself?

Families who depend on internet income need to be prepared if the primary account holder passes away, I don't think adsense can pay deceased people either.

How to start your web business
1. Incorporate, either LLC (usually best) or Inc.
2. (whatever)

The reasons are many. The thread does a very good job of outlining just one reason, and perhaps not the most important reason (which would be reduce or control risks of being sued).

"I was told by my accountant that because I incorporated all my various web and internet endeavors last year, I needed to get all my various income and expense accounts into my company's name. "

I would get a new accountant, seems like the easy answer to me rather than changing everything to suit his needs.

I would get a new accountant, seems like the easy answer to me rather than changing everything to suit his needs.

That would not solve his problem. There is a reason the accountant asks for this. There are rules for being able to get VAT back and for deducting expenses. If an invoice is for John Doe and not for Widget LLC or Widget LTD., the taxman might have a problem with that, because legally John Doe and Widget LLC. are two different entities.

I am also in the process of incorporating, and this thread prompted me to contact my Adsense rep to ask what I should do. I got this very simple answer. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like the process is actually quite easy, at least as far as updating Adsense goes:

"To update your tax information, simply log into your account and access the My Account page (https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10333).

Moreover, if you're planning on incorporating you may also need to update your account payee name. You can do so by following the steps here:
[google.com...]

Please note that updating your payee name will automatically reset your tax information and form of payment selection and will need to re-enter both items again."