Account-default conversion goals

Conversion goals are only available to customers who have migrated to the new Search Ads 360 experience. Check the experience hub to stay up to date on your available features, including conversion goals.

For each conversion goal, you can decide whether to include it by default across all the campaigns in your account. Enabling the 'account-default' setting for a conversion goal means that the primary conversion actions within that goal will be tracked as conversions in your reporting and used for bidding across all your campaigns (except those where you’ve set up campaign-specific goals).

Note: The 'Conversion value' column shows the sum of conversion values for conversions in your 'Conversions' column. 

This article describes what account-default goals are and why you might use them. Learn more about creating and editing goals

In this article

• The benefits of account-default conversion goals
• How account-default conversion goals work
• Set a goal as an account-default goal

The benefits of account-default conversion goals

You can use the 'account-default' setting to:

• Fine-tune your 'Conversions' column to only view data for the conversion actions that matter most to you.
• Tell Search Ads 360 which conversions to optimise for in an automated bid strategy.
• Adjust your 'Conversions' column to better inform your manual bidding.

When a conversion goal is applied to a campaign, it will show up in the 'Conversions' column in your Search Ads 360 reports. Conversion goals that are not applied to your campaign will not appear in the 'Conversions' column. You can still view reporting for all conversion goals in the 'All conversions' column in your reports.

How account-default conversion goals work

Conversion goals are groups of conversion actions. For a particular conversion action to be included in your conversions reporting and be used for bidding, it must be marked as a 'primary action'. This setting must be enabled in addition to the 'account-default' setting (which is set at the conversion goal level) in order for an individual conversion action to be used for measurement and bidding by default across campaigns. Learn more about primary and secondary conversion actions

The 'account-default' setting lets you choose whether or not to include the conversion action data related to your conversion goal in your conversions reporting by default across your campaigns. Google uses the data included in your conversions reporting to optimise your bids when you use an automated bidding strategy like target cost-per-action (CPA). Choosing not to include a conversion action means your automated bid strategies won’t bid for these particular conversions. This can be useful if you want to bid for certain kinds of conversions, but not others.

Example

You own an online clothing store and you have 2 conversion goals: 'Add to basket', which includes 1 conversion action to track each time a customer puts something in their shopping basket; and 'Purchases', which includes 2 conversion actions, one to track clothing purchases and another to track styling services purchases.

You want to optimise your bidding for the 'Purchases' conversion goal and see these conversions in your reporting. You don’t want to bid for the 'Add to basket' conversion action, and you don’t need this data in your reporting.

You select 'Use as an account goal' for your 'Purchases' conversion goal and deselect the setting for the 'Add to basket' goal. Now, your automated bid strategy will only optimise your campaign towards your purchase goal, and your reporting will only show purchase conversions. However, data for the shopping basket goal is still included in your 'All conversions' column.

If you don’t use automated bid strategies to optimise for conversions, this setting won’t automatically affect your bidding. However, you can also use the setting to adjust the 'Conversions' column to better inform your manual bidding.

The default setting for most conversion actions is to include data in the 'Conversions' column.

For app campaigns you create in Google Ads, you always set the conversion actions that you’d like to use for bidding and reporting at the campaign level, and account-default goals aren’t applicable.

Set a goal as an account-default goal

Manage your conversion goals on the conversions summary page. To view the conversions summary page, sign in to your new Search Ads 360 experience and then do one of the following:

• To view Search Ads 360 conversion goals:
  1. Navigate to a sub-manager account.
  2. Click the tools and settings icon and then click Conversions.
• To view Google Ads conversion goals:
  1. Navigate to a Google Ads client account.
  2. Click the tools and settings icon and then click Conversions.

In the conversions summary, standard goals and their grouped conversion actions are displayed automatically. These goals are created based on your conversion actions. Custom goals are displayed at the bottom of the page. 

In the conversions summary, standard goals and their grouped conversion actions are displayed automatically. These goals are created based on your conversion actions. Custom goals are displayed at the bottom of the page.

1. On the conversions summary page, go to the conversion goal that you want to edit.
2. Click Edit goal.
   1. Select Use [goal name] as an account-default goal.
   2. Choose the conversion actions to set as primary or secondary actions.
3. Click Save changes.

Related links

• About conversion goals
• About primary and secondary conversion actions
• About campaign-specific conversion goals