Manager Accounts (MCC): Set up cross-account conversion tracking

To use cross-account conversions, you’ll need to have more than one Google Ads account and a manager account that’s linked to those accounts.

If you haven’t set up conversion tracking before, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Create cross-account conversions within a manager account
To create cross-account conversion actions, sign in to your manager account and follow these instructions, choosing the appropriate conversion source for the kind of conversion action you want to track.

Tip:

When adding the new conversion tracking tag to your website or code to your mobile app, make sure that you leave your old tag or code for the number of days in your chosen conversion window. Also, do not remove your old conversion actions or their tags until your conversion window has passed. Otherwise, you could lose some conversions – specifically those generated from clicks that happened before these changes.

Step 2: Choose accounts for conversion action sharing
After you’ve created cross-account conversion actions for your accounts and added new conversion tracking tags to your website if necessary, you can let your managed accounts use these conversion actions. Keep in mind the following:
  • Before changing any conversion accounts, make sure that you’ve already added the necessary tags to your website. Otherwise, conversions won’t be recorded.
  • To verify cross-account conversion actions, make sure you've chosen one or more managed accounts to use your manager account's cross-account conversion actions, and that at least one conversion is recorded in a managed account.
  • To share conversion actions across your managed accounts, set up sharing from within your manager account. Conversion actions cannot be shared between managed accounts.

Note: When switching from using account specific conversion tracking to cross-account conversion tracking based on your Manager account, campaigns that are targeting a specific conversion action will switch to using the MCC account's default conversion goals. Continuing to target a specific conversion action can produce inconsistent behavior, as the Manager account may not have the same goals as the serving-account. Make sure that your campaigns are optimizing to the right goals. The same behavior happens when you move from MCC to serving account conversion tracking.

There are different statuses in the Google Ads Conversion Account column. A definition can be found below:

  • “Client” indicates that no manager account has been chosen for conversion tracking.
  • “This Manager” indicates the manager account that you are currently on has been chosen for conversion tracking.
  • Any other name indicates that another manager account, has been chosen for conversion tracking.

Follow the steps below to share cross-account conversion actions with your managed accounts:

  1. Sign in to your Google Ads manager account.
  2. Click the Accounts Accounts icon. icon, then click the Sub-account settings drop down in the section menu. You'll find a full list of your managed accounts.
  3. In the Google Ads Conversion Account column you'll notice where an account is tracking conversions.
    1. To change the conversion tracking account, click on the Conversion account cell for each account you'd like to edit.
    2. Select This manager. Your managed accounts will now use your conversion actions.

Tip:

When choosing your accounts, remember that an account can’t simultaneously use account-specific conversion actions and cross-account conversion actions. It can use only one or the other. You can switch between the two without losing any conversions, though. Also, if an account belongs to more than one manager account, it can only use conversion actions from one manager.

Disabling cross-account conversion tracking

A managed account can switch back to using its account-specific conversion actions again instead of cross-account conversion actions.

Before switching conversion action management back to a managed account, make sure that the conversion tracking tags belonging to those conversion actions are still on the relevant web pages, if necessary. For example, you might have removed these tags when you created a cross-account conversion action. If that’s the case, the managed account will need to generate new tags and add them to the site.

To prevent any conversions from being lost during the transition, leave the tag for the cross-account conversion as long as the number of days in your chosen conversion window.

To stop sharing conversion actions with managed accounts, simply follow the steps above under "Choose accounts for conversion action sharing", but during step 4, select Change to client.

Disable cross-account conversion actions in a managed account
Your managed accounts also can opt out of using your cross-account conversion actions at any time. If they change their mind later, your managed accounts can always contact you to have you share again.

Have your managed accounts follow these steps if they’d like to disable cross-account conversion actions.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon Goals Icon.
  2. Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Click Conversion account.
  5. Select This account.
  6. Click Save.

Disable cross-account conversion actions on a manager account

You can remove cross-account conversions from a child account via the manager account.

  1. Sign in to your Google Ads manager account.
  2. Click the Accounts Accounts icon. icon, then click the Sub-account settings drop down in the section menu. You'll find a full list of your managed accounts.
  3. In the Google Ads Conversion Account column you'll notice where an account is tracking conversions.
    1. To change the conversion tracking account, click on the Conversion account cell for each account you'd like to edit.
    2. Select Client. Your managed accounts will now use the individual accounts conversion actions.

Related links

Topic Page Manager Accounts (MCC)

Audiences and Conversion Tracking

Other

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