Smart Bidding uses conversions and conversion value data in Google Ads to help meet your goals. If you have any issues with conversion tracking, you can use data exclusions to prevent any unintended changes in your conversions from affecting Smart Bidding.
Learn more About data exclusions.
Instructions
- In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon
.
- Click the Budgets and bidding drop down in the section menu.
- Click Adjustments.
- Select the Exclusions tab at the top.
- Click the plus button
to add a new data exclusion.
- Next to “Settings,” enter a name and description.
- Enter the start date and time and end date and time for the data you’d like to exclude. Since conversions can be attributed to clicks in the past, select a date range that accounts for the typical conversion delay.
- Next to "Scope," select campaigns and devices for this adjustment. You can select individual campaigns to exclude or the entire account.
- Select devices to exclude. For example, the conversion issue may only have affected mobile tracking.
- Click Save.
- Data exclusions may change how your bid strategies perform. Before you create an exclusion, confirm that the information is correct. Click Create data exclusion.
Tip: When you apply data exclusions, you can set your campaign budget closer to its historical spend for a few conversion cycles to avoid spending more than what you're comfortable with.
Remove data exclusion
When the data exclusion is live, you’ll find the status as “Active.”
For example, if you experience occasional problems like tagging issues or website outages, when you're able to successfully upload conversions for the excluded time period you can remove the exclusion.
You can remove a data exclusion to incorporate the conversion data into Smart Bidding. The removal allows you to “undo” the data exclusion.
However, we recommend not removing the data exclusion after the accurate conversion data has been backfilled, as Smart Bidding will need to train on this new data and it may cause changes in your bidding. Advertisers can backfill the accurate conversion data for their reporting purposes, but we recommend not removing data exclusions.
Best practices and when to use data exclusions
Data exclusions apply to clicks and not conversions. Excluding conversions without excluding clicks may show a lower conversion rate, which may be inaccurate. You can use data exclusions to address issues related to conversion tracking, such as offline import failures, broken conversions, or broken value tracking tags. Data exclusions can reduce volatility and undo bad conversion data, but may cause some fluctuations. Below are some scenarios on when to use data exclusions:
- Broken conversion tracking for a certain period: Exclude data for about 1 conversion cycle from being used for Smart Bidding. To get back on track, you can exclude data up to one conversion cycle.
- Incorrectly placed conversion tag on the website that resulted in inaccurate conversion counts: Exclude data of the period when the conversion tag was incorrectly placed from being used for Smart Bidding.
- Temporarily unable to upload offline conversion data: Exclude data from being used for automated bidding until the issue is fixed.
- Conversion reporting issues and concerns about how Smart Bidding will react: Exclude data during the period from being used for Smart Bidding.
Note:
- Data exclusions are meant to account for outages or major issues. Using them often or for long periods could negatively impact Smart Bidding performance.
- Data exclusions isn’t recommended to address fluctuations in conversions.
