About counting Google Ads conversions

 This article applies only to Google Ads accounts in the new Search Ads 360.

With Google Ads conversion tracking, you have the flexibility to count conversions according to your business needs. For any conversion action, you can choose to count every conversion that happens after an interaction, or only one conversion that happens after an interaction. These counting choices can give you a better sense of your Google Ads campaign performance and help you refine your bids. Your conversion counting choices will be reflected in the 'Client account conversions' columns, the 'All conversions' columns and the 'View-through conversion (VTC)' column.

Currently, you can create conversion actions only in the previous Search Ads 360 experience or in Google Ads.

"Client account conversion value” is visible under “Client account conversion value” for Google Ads specific client accounts.

Check the Experience hub to stay up to date on your available features, including bidding. 

Counting options

There may be multiple conversion actions that you'll want to track because they reflect valuable activity for your business. You can select a different counting method for each conversion action.

To figure out which conversion counting option is best for each conversion action, let's take a closer look at the 2 counting settings: 

• Every: With this setting, Google Ads counts every conversion (per tracked conversion action) that happens after an ad interaction. This is a good choice if you'd like to track and improve your sales, because every sale likely adds value for your business.

  Example

  You own a travel booking site used to reserve both hotel rooms and hire cars. You'd like to see how your ads drive each type of booking, so you choose to count every conversion. When someone travelling to Chicago, Denver and New York books one hotel reservation in each city (3 hotel reservations) and rental cars only in Chicago and Denver (2 car reservations), this conversion setting will count 5 conversions.

• One: With this setting, Google Ads counts only one conversion per ad click. This is a good choice if you're not interested in the number of sales, but instead whether a certain kind of lead was generated. This is because usually only one, unique lead per ad click likely adds value for your business.

  Example

  You run an insurance company that offers home, car and life insurance, and you measure conversions for each type of policy as a different conversion action. You'd like to see how well your ads drive people to fill in a form on your site requesting information about one or more insurance products.

  You notice people sometimes fill in multiple forms with different values for the same products. If the same person fills in 3 auto-insurance forms and 2 home-insurance forms, using this conversion setting will show you 2 conversions (one for each conversion action).

You may also want to count one conversion for some conversion actions and every conversion for others.

Example

You run a financial services firm and use Google Ads to drive 2 conversions: sales of online tax software and leads for an in-person consultation service. You notice that people often make multiple purchases of the tax software (perhaps separate purchases for state and federal taxes). However, people also fill multiple lead forms (maybe for different office locations or appointment times).

While you would like to track every sale, you want to track only unique leads. You set the software sales conversion action to count every conversion and the lead conversion action to count one conversion. If a click on your ad leads to 2 sales and 2 leads, you will see 3 conversions – one for each sale, and one for the unique lead.

For each conversion action, you can see the average number of conversions resulting from a click by looking at the repeat rate (every conversion / one conversion) in the 'Conversion actions' table.

Instructions

In the settings for each Google Ads conversion action, you’ll see a 'Count' setting. You can edit the setting for an existing conversion action.

You can change this setting anytime for any of your conversion actions. (Just keep in mind that the changes will only apply to future conversions for a particular conversion action, and won't apply to a conversion action's past data.)

1. Sign in to your new Search Ads 360.
2. Navigate to a Google Ads client account.
3. On the toolbar, click the tools and settings icon , then under 'Measurement', click Conversions.
4. In the table, click the name of the conversion action you want to edit.
5. On the 'Details' page, click Edit settings.
6. Click Count to expand the section, and then select Every or One.
7. Click Save, and then click Done.

Default count settings

If you don't make a choice, Google Ads will automatically use the default count setting. These defaults vary by conversion source and are based on how most advertisers want to count that particular kind of conversion.

• Every conversion is the default for website, in-app actions, Analytics transactions, clicks on your number on your mobile website and import conversion actions.
• One conversion is the default for calls from ads, Analytics goals, calls to a phone number on your website and app install conversion actions. 

Security and privacy for conversion tracking

Google has strict security standards. Google Ads only collects data on sites and apps where you have configured tracking.

Ensure that you provide users with clear and comprehensive information about the data you collect on your sites, apps and other properties. Make sure that you also get consent for that collection where required by law or any applicable Google policies governing user consent, including Google’s EU user consent policy.