AdWords Updates How Advertisers Track Conversions

As an advertiser, you know how important goals are. They must be measurable, attainable and unique. Having an understanding of the importance of your goals, and the different needs of businesses, Google AdWords has made some modifications to the way they attribute and count conversions. They realize that advertisers need flexibility when tracking conversions.

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Unique or All Conversions?

Coming sometime this month, you will be able to tell Google how to ‘count’ your conversions. What is important to you; a unique conversion or are there instances where multiple conversions, per 1 user, is just as relevant? Well, now you have the option to choose what’s best for measuring your goals. In Google’s unveiling email sent to advertisers this week, they give the example where a unique conversion may be best for lead generation, whereas an ecommerce advertiser may want to count each sale, even if it’s multiple sales per 1 user.

The flexibility really comes in if you have the need for unique and all conversions. Let’s say you’re hosting a webinar and you sell widgets. You want to track only unique sign-ups for the webinar, but you want to count all purchases of widgets. With these new changes, you can do just that. When the new tracking is available to you, create two different conversions (under the Tools, then Conversions), or modify existing conversions, to include the appropriate ‘count’ for that conversion.

Revised Column Headers

In lieu of the new changes, AdWords is also changing how the headers are labeled.

Conversions (1-per-click) will now be shown as “Converted Clicks”. Google feels this header better-represents “clicks that result in at least one conversion”.

Conversions (many-per-click) will be simply called “Conversions” which will “count conversions based on how you want each conversion action to be counted”; i.e. All or Unique.

Comparing Old vs New Data

Of course, these new changes will not go retro- meaning your old data will retain the old conversion tracking types. Once the new conversion types are released, it will be difficult to compare apples-to-apples. We’ll keep you posted of any best practices once we learn more and can actually play with the new conversion tracking.

For more examples and screenshots, check out Google’s updated help article. And let us know how you see this flexibility working for you.