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  • How does Google’s AdWords Conversion Tracking Mechanism Work?

How does Google’s AdWords Conversion Tracking Mechanism Work?

March 3, 2006 / Dave Taylor / AdSense, AdWords, and PPC Help / 3 Comments

I have an online shopping website in which I have setup google’s Adwords Conversion tracking mechanism at two places, namely, Signup Confirmation and in the Payment page. In the Signup Confirmation page, I wish to track the number of signups occurring as a result of google adwords. While in the payment page, I wish to track the amount of the order.
Accordingly, while generating the conversion tracking code for payment page, I have entered value for the (Advanced option: conversion value) field to be equal to the order value. This Advanced conversion value helps to measure how much each conversion is worth to you.
In the Create Report screen while generating a customized report, which of the Conversion columns will help me track my order value if a conversion has occurred?

I didn’t have much of a clue about your question, but I knew who did, so I asked Mark Widawer about it and after he did a spot of research, here’s what he found:
This is a great question, Dave, mostly because most people who run Google Adwords campaigns don’t know about or don’t use Conversion Tracking. It’s such a critical part of any Adwords campaign, and a much more accurate indicator of your success than a high Click Through Rate or a low Cost Per Click.
This question is also illuminating because Google doesn’t do a very good job of explaining Conversion Tracking, especially as it is reported right on the Campaign Management Screen. For example, if you’ve got multiple conversion events set up for your campaign, Google counts conversions by people, not by events. So, if you’re tracking both signups to a newsletter and sales of your product, you’ll only know how many people did one or the other, and not how many of each event.
That’s a bit unexpected and misleading, but given the amount of space they’ve got to work with, it’s understandable. But that also makes the Conversion Reports that much more important.
To illustrate how Google reports the data, I set up a little test with a single keyword and three pages. The first page was the “landing page”. It had a link on it to the “signup thank you page”, which in turn had a link to the “sales thank you page”. I ran an ad and had it clicked on at five different computers. I registered four opt-ins, and two sales. And I set a sales value of $7, and a “signup value” of $1.00.
Google accurately reported a CTR of 100%, and four “Conversions”. Note again that they’re referring here to the number of users who converted, not the number of conversion events. They also showed 6 Transactions, which is the number of all conversion events (4 signups + 2 sales). Because I had both a signup value and a Sales value, Google reported a Total Value of $18 (2*7 + 4*1=18). The total Sales Value was $14.
So, to sum it all up, if you’ve got values associated with more than one conversion event, the value of all your sales would be in the Sales Value column. The value of all of your conversion events would be in the Total Value column.
By the way, Dave, these are the kinds of intelligent questions we’re answering regularly in the Landing Page Cash Machine Workshop along with other topics related directly to Google and converting Google visitors to buying customers.
I’ve posted a copy of the report CSV and screen shot on my website, in case anyone wants to see the actual report from Google. They’ll find it here.
I hope that helps!
Mark Widawer
Landing Page Cash Machine

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
AdWords Conversion Tracking, Google AdWords, PPC stats

3 comments on “How does Google’s AdWords Conversion Tracking Mechanism Work?”

  1. pri says:
    October 3, 2008 at 1:01 am

    Hi
    Need som advice in tracking conversions and final sale of a product. The individual clicks on an advert is led onto a landing page whcih requires him to register. there is a thank you page that is triggered on clicking the submit button and registering. plan to have the conversion code sitting on this page. After which an email is sent to the user with his login details. Uplong clicking the activiation link on this email – he is led back to the website – asked to login and then has to buy the product from the website. Upon filling the product information and clicking onbuy another thank you page is thrown up. How do i in this even track registrations and final sale. Please help

    Reply
  2. Alex says:
    September 12, 2008 at 4:38 am

    Im currently running 57 campaigns under one Google account, targeted at 57 different countries. I have set my 30 availiable conversion trackings to the most important campaigns. The problem is that I read at Google that they are not availiable to track conversion from all Google sites…is that correct, because it says reporting, does dat mean that they dont show at the reports, but they do at the control panel.
    I had last month 619.574 impresions, 27.038 clicks and only 21 convestions, being this a 0.08% but my sales increased about 49% Im really worried because I dont think that this is a normal tracking. Any suggestions???

    Reply
  3. dlynn says:
    September 13, 2006 at 7:54 pm

    I am a total neophyte where PPC, Adwords, and Adsense campaigns are concerned and am desperately seeking information/knowledge. Is there a particular book/resource you would recommend for beginners?
    P.S. This Conversion Tracking article is a great start! Tx, D

    Reply

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