Three New AdWords Conversion Tracking Features

AdWords tracking features updateImage credit: aizymusic.com

Google AdWords has quickly (and quietly) released three new features and abilities to their conversion tracking over the last month, all of which give advertisers more flexibility to the data they’re analyzing. From choosing how long to attribute conversions back to a paid campaign to tracking conversions between multiple accounts, there’s something for everyone. Let’s take a quick look at each one.

Cross-Account Tracking & Search Funnels

Google announced that advertisers will be able to start tracking conversions across multiple accounts on August 26. Along with that, they will also be able to analyze search funnels between accounts to better understand users’ search behavior. Before then, you had no idea how a user interacted between each account and quite possibly inflated your conversion count if you had each account’s conversion code on your thank you/confirmation page. Now you will not only be able to optimize based on a uniform conversion total and review your search funnels to better understand how a user flows towards your goals.

Import Offline Conversions into AdWords

On September 6, Google announced advertisers will be able to import offline conversion data directly into AdWords. If you ever dealt with a company that has a ton of sales completed offline, whether via phone or a sale rep, you should be very excited. It is usually very difficult to determine your ROI from online advertising, especially when the sales cycle is long and occurs offline. Or if you’re optimizing toward a CPA goal for lead generation, well now you can actually go back and upload all the data you would need to determine whether you were profitable from those leads. This is the first step of what I believe will be many in the right direction for AdWords.

Customizable Conversion Window

And then just this week on September 23, Google announced that you can now adjust your conversion window (i.e., how long a conversion is attributed to a source). Previously, all Google conversions would count within 30 days after an ad click. You now have the ability to choose one of the default options of 7, 30, or 90 days, or customize your own length. At SEER, we have some clients that have their attribution model set to only count orders from a paid click that occur within 14 days. This used to not allow for easy optimization with AdWords’ 30-day conversion window. Now we’ll be able to customize our window to adjust for their model and improve their campaigns properly.

While none of these with affect all advertisers, it shows that Google still believes in giving advertiser some control and flexibility over their wants and needs (even after taking some away with “enhanced” campaigns).

fshovlin

fshovlin

Francis Shovlin has been in the search industry since 2007, most of that time has been spent at Seer Interactive located in Philadelphia and San Diego, where he helps companies achieve their business goals. You can follow his unpredictable thoughts on life, music, beer and PPC on Twitter: @fmshovlin

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