How to Register Your Email Address For A Google Account Without a Gmail Address

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is that businesses both large and small often have a registered Gmail address that owns all of their Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Studio, or Optimize accounts. It’s often the {companyname}@gmail.com.

Years later, the employee, agency, or contractor that set up the account is gone and no one has the password. Now no one can access the account. Unfortunately, the analytics account is replaced with a new one, and all the history is lost.

That doesn’t need to happen.

You don’t have to use a Gmail address to have a Google Account registered (and you shouldn’t!). On the registration page for a Google Account, it’s not overly obvious but they do offer you to register a different email address to control your account:

How to Register a Corporate Email Address For a Google Account

Here’s a short video that walks you through it.

My advice to most companies is to set up an email distribution list for their marketing team and then register that email address as a Google Account. That way, as employees come and go you can simply update your email distribution list. If a password is changed, you’ll be notified and then you can change the password back.

We even have a phone number for our business that distributes incoming SMS (text messages) so we can enable two-factor authentication on the account as well.

If you currently have all of your Google apps registered with a Gmail address, that’s no problem. Register your new Google Account email address and then add that email on each of your apps as someone that can update user access. Then you never have to remember that dumb Gmail login ever again!