About primary and secondary conversion actions

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.

In Search Ads 360, actions that you want your customers to take, or conversion actions, are grouped together into conversion goals. For example, the “Purchase” conversion goal contains all your conversion actions in which customers make a purchase.

When you set up conversion tracking, you will be selecting primary and secondary conversion actions that support a defined goal:

• Primary actions: These are conversion actions that are reported in the “Conversions” column in your reports and used for bidding as long as the standard goal they are part of is used for bidding.
• Secondary actions: These conversion actions are for observation only. They are used for reporting in the “All conversions” column in your reports, but not for bidding, even if the goal they are included in is used for bidding. The one exception is if the secondary action is part of a custom goal, in which case it's used for bidding. 

• Most, but not all, conversion actions can be set to either primary or secondary. For example, store sales direct conversion actions can't be set to primary, and Store Visits can't be set to secondary.
• Store sales direct conversion actions can't be used for bidding even if included as part of a custom goal.
• You can't bid to both store visits and store sales goals at the same time. You must select one or the other. If you want to switch between the two goals, you must first remove one and then add the desired goal. For example, remove store visits as a goal first, and then add store sales.

Example

You may have a standard goal called “purchases” that's applied by default to campaigns in your account. Within your “purchases” goal you may have two conversion actions: 

• A “subscription” conversion action that you've marked as primary
• A “one-time purchase” conversion action that you've marked as secondary. The primary action will be reported in the “Conversions” column and used for bidding in all campaigns that use your “purchases” goal. The secondary action will be used for observation only.

Conversion actions included in a custom goal are used for reporting and bidding regardless of whether they"re set as “primary” or “secondary” actions. There can be exceptions to this such as the store sales direct conversion action, which can't be used for bidding, even if used in a custom goal. For example, if you add your “one-time purchase” secondary conversion action to a custom goal, the “one-time purchase” action will automatically be used for reporting and bidding in any campaign that uses your custom goal, even though it's marked as secondary.

Update the primary and secondary setting for a conversion action 

Manage your conversion goals on the conversions summary page. To view the conversions summary page, sign into 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, find the goal that includes the conversion action you'd like to edit.

1. Click Edit goal.
2. Next to the conversion action you want to update, click the drop-down and select either Primary action or Secondary action.
3. Click Save changes.

Related links

• About conversion goals
• Set a conversion goal in a campaign