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Google’s “Converted Clicks” is going away.

Who Cares?

Your response should be “Meh” because if you’re like our clients the most important metric when paying for advertising is to measure the number leads that are generated, and to that end there should be very little impact.  If you’ve been measuring the total number of conversions then your paid search metics could take a small bump … up.

What’s the difference?

Check to see what counts as a conversion in Adwords before September 2016

Google Adwords help lays out “Conversions” vs. “Converted Clicks” quite nicely and I’ll recap it here … “Conversions” allows you to count every or one conversion following a click on your ad. It also allows you to count cross device conversions so that when someone clicks on a mobile ad and follows up with a conversion on desktop you know about it.  There are many other reporting reasons such as adding a value to the conversion and indicating which conversions (of many you could be tracking) that you’d like to use for CPA and other bid targets.  Basically “Conversions” is the way you want to go anyway, and Google’s going to make you do it in September 2016. “Converted Clicks” are a bit more constraining. You can only measure conversions that happen in the visit from the ad, you can’t see follow up conversions, nor can you see conversions that happen across devices.    You can only count one conversion for each click.  There are additional constraints we won’t go into here.  Basically it has less flexibility than it’s younger brother “Conversions” and you wouldn’t miss much when you make the switch.

What’s the Impact?

Since most of our clients are measuring leads, or people that become customers, changing this metric will have little effect.  If that is your strategy too, now is a good time to make sure your metrics are set up to measure your advertising success properly.  Conversions can be tracked a few ways and when this change happens in September if you see your success change significantly it might be due to the change in counting … not an improvement in your advertising.

One Caveat

If you’re currently using an automated bid strategy, take a close look at how to move from “Converted Clicks” to “Conversions” as you may want to make some additional adjustments after changing your bid metric.   Not sure?  Give us a shout and we’d be happy to take a look at your methodology.