Another day, another change in Google AdWords. This morning, a large number of advertisers were recipients an email from Google regarding an upcoming change in how conversions are tracked in your accounts. Taking effect in February of 2014, yes, this month, Google will be changing how your conversions are counted in your ppc account. Check it out.
Summary of Changes
Here’s a general rundown of the upcoming changes:
1.) Counting Conversions: You will be able to tell Google how many times you would like it to count a certain conversion type. For example, in ecommerce accounts you want to count each sale as a conversion. Each time someone purchases something, it’s a conversion. In a lead generation account, you only want to count a conversion the first time someone fills out a lead. Any subsequent leads would then be duplicate information that don’t provide value to your company.
2.) Conversion Columns: This is where things are going to get a bit interesting.
Conversions (1-per-click) will now be “Converted Clicks”. From all indicators, this is the same as the current column. Each click that leads to a conversion be counted in this column.
Conversions (many-per-click) will now be “Conversions”. This is where you’ll see the count of conversions you designated in the first step. So for the example above, you would see all individual sales and only unique leads in this column.
Here’s the example from the email:
Acme Corp uses AdWords to drive two important conversions: sales of their online tax software and leads for their in-person consultation service. They notice that people often make multiple purchases of their tax software – perhaps separate purchases for state and federal taxes. However, people also fill multiple lead forms. While Acme would like to count every sale as a conversion, they would like to count only unique leads.
If a click on their AdWords ad led to two sales and two leads, the previous conversions (many-per-click) would count four conversions whereas conversions (1-per-click) would only count one. Acme would like to see three conversions: one for each sale, and one for the unique lead. Now with flexible conversion counting, Acme can see the right number of conversions for each conversion action they measure in AdWords.
All in all, this seems like it could be a pretty cool advancement. Our regular conversions column will be seemingly unchanged except for a name, but the many-per-click column could become a strong tool for those advertisers who have two different types of conversions in their accounts.
Full Email Received from Google
Dear AdWords Advertiser,
In order to better meet the unique needs of your business, we’re making important improvements to conversion reporting in AdWords. We’re writing to share details about these upcoming changes so you are ready to take advantage of them when they are available in your account.
What’s changing?
– More flexibility in counting conversions. Beginning in February 2014, you will be able to specify how to count different conversion actions. For example, you can choose to count all instances of certain conversion actions (such as sales) while counting only unique instances of other conversion actions (such as leads).
– Easier to understand conversion column names.
‘Conversions (1-per-click)’ will be renamed ‘Converted clicks’. This new column name is a more accurate representation of what this column actually counts: clicks that result in at least one conversion. In most cases, you’ll want to measure conversions, not just converted clicks.
‘Conversions (many-per-click)’ will be replaced by a new ‘Conversions’ column that has additional functionality. This column will count conversions, based on how you want each conversion action to be counted.
An example of how this works
Acme Corp uses AdWords to drive two important conversions: sales of their online tax software and leads for their in-person consultation service. They notice that people often make multiple purchases of their tax software – perhaps separate purchases for state and federal taxes. However, people also fill multiple lead forms. While Acme would like to count every sale as a conversion, they would like to count only unique leads.
If a click on their AdWords ad led to two sales and two leads, the previous conversions (many-per-click) would count four conversions whereas conversions (1-per-click) would only count one. Acme would like to see three conversions: one for each sale, and one for the unique lead. Now with flexible conversion counting, Acme can see the right number of conversions for each conversion action they measure in AdWords.
How flexible conversion counting affects your account
If you don’t change anything, your ‘Conversions’ column will look identical to the Conversions (many-per-click) you see today. ‘Conversions (1-per-click)’ will be renamed ‘Converted clicks’ although there is no change in functionality.
Additionally, automated bidding solutions like Conversion Optimizer and eCPC will continue to function as they do now for both the new ‘Converted clicks’ column and the ‘Conversions’ column.
Flexible conversion counting will be be available in your account in February. To read more about the new column names and counting preferences, please see this article in the Help Center <https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3438531>.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
What do you think? Will this help, hurt, or do absolutely nothing for your conversion tracking?
