Google is the world’s largest search engine and the publisher of the most used mobile operating system. However, most of the company’s money and value to consumers come from its ad platform. Google AdWords has changed the way people advertise their services online through highly effective targeting. The proof has been in the pudding, with Google AdWords showing impressive conversion figures for many campaigns. Business owners who use AdWords will notice some changes in the way conversions are tracked in the AdWords dashboard.
There is a lot of data that goes into making Google AdWords the powerful ad platform that it is. One of the challenges for the developers is putting this data into formats that are useful and easy to understand for business owners. Google hopes that by changing the way conversions are reported will help business owners find the information that matters the most to them and make better decisions accordingly.
“AdWords conversion tracking columns are being re-designed so they are more intuitive, giving you more control over the data they show”, the company wrote in a Google+ post. “Starting mid-October 2015, you’ll be able to use the “Optimization” setting for each of your conversion actions to determine whether their data should be included in “Conversions.” This added customization lets you prioritize the conversion actions that are most meaningful for your business.”
The updates involve multiple changes to how things are tracked and where that information is presented in the updated dashboard. For example, the “Conv. (opt.)” column will be removed since that data will be shown in the newly updated “Conversions” column. These changes wills serve as the foundation of a new plan by Google to allow advertisers to bid on new conversion types and attribution models.
Additionally, the Google AdWords team is introducing an “All conversions” column. This new column will consolidate data that was previous located in various places. In the new column, users will see the conversions that were previously part of “Estimated total conversions.” This includes “Cross-device conversions,” store visits and any conversion actions created by the user. The user generated conversion actions will be included regardless of their Optimization setting.
The system still gives advertisers the ability to select whether to count only one conversion or every conversion after an ad click for each conversion action. Similarly, Google says the columns will continue to support segmentation by conversion action and category, as well as the creation of custom columns.
However, there will be some changes. The updated controls and new conversion types are not offered for the “Converted clicks” column. Google recommends that users with “Converted clicks” for bidding or reporting switch to using “Conversions” instead.
These changes will make data from Google AdWords easier to use for business owners and marketers. Google AdWords has been an extremely valuable tool for business owners for many years. Any business owner who hasn’t started using AdWords can start now and know that they can easily find data that shows the effectiveness of the platform for their business. Current AdWords users should keep these updates in mind if they notice strange movement in conversion numbers.
For more information about upcoming updates to AdWords, read this article on Google adding more ads to mobile search result pages.