Conversion goals help you organize your conversion actions so that you can easily optimize toward your advertising objectives.
Conversion actions are actions that you want your customers to take. They are grouped together based on related categories to form these conversion goals. For example, the “Purchase” conversion goal automatically includes all conversion actions, such as purchasing online on select websites or purchasing through select apps, that fall under the “Purchase” category type.
On this page
- Benefits
- Requirements for conversion import from Google Analytics
- Conversion goals overview
- Conversion actions
- How conversion actions and conversion goals work together to influence bidding
- How conversion goals and conversion actions impact campaign reporting
- Troubleshooting
Benefits
- Semantically meaningful grouping that helps advance optimization: The conversion actions in your account are automatically grouped into relevant conversion goals to describe the actions that are the most meaningful for your business. This also helps unlock bidding improvements and optimization opportunities.
- Simplify conversion management: Select and edit conversion goals when you create new campaigns to make sure you’re fully optimizing for conversions that matter and getting the most from your campaigns. Capturing all relevant conversion actions is critical to helping you achieve your advertising objective. You can also set up account-default conversion goals that you can apply to various campaigns to save time on managing conversion goals for each campaign.
- Improve campaign performance: Using account-default goals makes sure that all your valuable conversions are considered across all your campaigns for your smart bidding strategies. This gives Google AI more data to learn from to power your bid strategies and deliver better performance. Learn how Smart Bidding uses advanced machine learning to save time and boost performance.
Requirements for conversion import from Google Analytics
Ensure the following criteria are met before attempting to import conversions:
- Permissions: You must have Admin access in Google Ads and Edit access in the linked Google Analytics property.
- Key events: Only events marked as key events in Google Analytics are eligible for import.
- Linked accounts: Verify that the correct Google Analytics property is actively linked to your Google Ads account.
Enable Google signals and data sharing in Google Analytics
Enabling Google Signals is essential for cross-device reporting and ensuring consistent conversion data.
- In Admin, under Data collection and modification, select Data collection.
- In the "Google signals data collection" section, click Get started.
- Click Continue, then click Activate.
- Under “Account settings”, click Account to expand, then click Account details.
- Review and check "Google products & services",
- Click Save.
Learn more about Data sharing settings.
Conversion goals overview
Conversion goals are used to group conversion actions into semantically meaningful categories that represent the type of transaction, for example, “Purchases”, “Contacts”, or “Submit lead forms”. These goals are used to drive bidding optimization for your campaigns.
Conversion goal types
Standard goals
Conversion actions that you add are automatically grouped into conversion goals based on their conversion category type, for example, “Purchases”, “Contacts”, or “Submit lead forms”. These goals are called standard conversion goals.
You can select standard goals as goals for default bidding optimization across all campaigns in your account by making them “account-default conversion goals”. Those you haven’t chosen as account-default goals can still be used for bidding optimization in specific campaigns.
Account-default goals
The standard conversion goals you set up as account-default goals should be the conversion goals you’d like all campaigns in your account to bid and optimize toward automatically. These are typically the most meaningful goals for your business. When you create a new campaign, all account-default goals in your account are selected for optimization by default.
To get the most out of Google AI and cross-campaign learning within the account, it's recommended that you optimize all your campaigns to meet the same set of goals. You can do this by aligning all your campaigns to the same account-default goals. When you create a new campaign, you’ll be shown your existing account-default goals to add to your campaign.
Note: When creating a new campaign, if a specific web conversion goal (for example, “Purchase” or “Add to cart”) is associated with the new or existing campaigns, you’ll receive a notification to add the equivalent app conversion goal to the new or existing campaign(s).
If the web goal is associated with an existing campaign, from within the notification, you can also make the new app conversion goals your account-default goals. Making the app conversion goals account-default goals will add those goals to both your existing and new campaigns. These changes can help you boost conversions and campaign performance. Learn more About App Connect.
Example
If you have an existing account-default goal of “Purchases” that includes a variety of purchase-related conversion actions, that account-default goal is suggested as a conversion goal for the campaign you’re creating.
Note: If you have multiple standard conversion goals tracking different stages of the same conversion funnel, we recommend that you set only one of them as the account-default goal. For instance, if you’re an e-commerce shoe retailer that wants to drive more online shoe sales, it's recommended that you set "Purchase” as the account-default goal.
Custom goals (for advanced users)
Custom goals are goals that you can create and add any combination of primary and secondary conversion actions. For example, you can create a custom goal with a primary conversion action from the “Purchase” conversion goal and a secondary conversion action from the “Submit Lead Form” conversion goal. You can create custom goals in your “Conversions Summary” (to view the summary in Google Ads, click "Tools" and then under “Measurement”, click "Conversions").
Note that generally, these goals are for advanced use and aren't recommended in most cases.
Tip
You’re only able to bid toward one custom goal per campaign, so if you do choose to use a custom goal for a new campaign, make sure that your custom goal includes all conversion actions that you want your bidding to focus on. You can’t combine multiple custom goals for a single campaign.
View your conversion goals
- Go to Summary in Conversions drop-down within the Goals menu.
In addition to the predefined goal categories Google Ads provides, you can define your own custom goals. Custom goals are goals you create when you add any combination of conversion actions. If you create a custom goal, you’ll find it at the bottom of your goals page.
How to customize your reporting columns
You can customize your Google Ads statistics table to display conversion metrics at-a-glance. The columns available to choose from vary depending on whether you are looking at campaign, ad group, ad, or keyword levels.
To add and arrange your conversion columns, follow these steps:
- In your Google Ads account, go to Ad groups or Keywords depending on the metrics you want to customize.
- Above the statistics table, click the columns icon and select Modify columns.
- Expand the Conversions category in the menu to view the full list of available conversion metrics.
- Check the boxes next to the conversion columns you want to add to your table. We recommend including:
- Conversions (Conv.)
- Conv. value
- Cost / conv.
- Conv. rate
- All conv.
- All conv. value
- View-through conv.
- All conv. (by conv. time)
- (Optional) Rearrange columns: To change the order in which these metrics appear in your reporting table, go to the Your selected columns list on the right side of the screen. Drag and drop the column headers into your preferred order.
- (Optional) Save your set: Check the box next to Save your set of columns and enter a custom name to save this reporting view for future use.
- Click Apply to update your statistics table.
How conversion goals are used in bidding
When you set up a campaign, you select which goals it bids toward. Your campaign’s conversion report, specifically the “Conversions” and “Conversion value” columns will reflect these goals.
View and edit your campaign’s conversion goal settings
- Go to Campaigns within the “Campaigns” menu.
- Select the Settings tab, then select the campaign you want to edit the settings.
- Expand Conversion goals to show the goals your campaign is optimizing toward.
- You have the option to optimize toward account-default conversion goals or campaign-specific goals.
- Account-default: The campaign uses all conversion goals marked as “account-default” on the conversions summary page.
- Campaign-specific: The campaign uses conversion goals you explicitly select, which can include any custom goals.
- Hover over each goal to view which conversion actions you set as Primary (eligible for bidding) within that goal.
- Go to Campaigns within the “Campaigns” menu.
- Select Segment
from the bar above the campaigns table.
- Under “Conversions”, select either of the following:
- Conversion category to view reporting by conversion goal
- Conversion action to view reporting by conversion action
Conversion actions
Conversion actions are meaningful and concrete steps your customer and potential customers take, such as an online purchase or a phone call. Measured with conversion tracking, these actions represent valuable milestones for your business.
Conversion goals help group these related conversion actions and are categorized based on the category type you select.
Learn how to set up a conversion action.
How conversion actions are used in bidding
You can set conversion actions within each of your goals as either primary and secondary settings.
- Primary action: The action can be used for bidding and reporting, provided the campaign optimizes toward the associated conversion goal.
- Secondary action: The action is excluded from the “Conversions” column used for bidding optimization but is tracked and reported in the “All conversions” column for column observation. Learn more about understanding your conversion tracking data.
How conversion actions and conversion goals work together to influence bidding
For a campaign to use a conversion action for bidding, you must meet 2 conditions:
- The conversion action must be set as Primary.
- The campaign must use the goal that contains the conversion action for bidding.
Example 1
- The goal, “Purchase” is selected by 10 campaigns
- Conversion action A is set to “Primary”
Result: The Purchase goal and its associated “Conversion Action A” are driving bid optimization for those 10 campaigns.
Example 2
- The goal, “Submit lead form” isn’t selected by any campaign.
- Conversion action B is set to “Primary”
Result: The “Submit lead form” conversion action isn’t selected for bid optimization. Therefore, Conversion Action B, despite being set as “Primary”, doesn’t influence bid optimization for any campaigns.
How conversion goals and conversion actions impact campaign reporting
Only the primary conversion actions your campaign optimizes toward will appear in the “Conversions” and “Conversion value” columns in your campaign report. You can still view reports for secondary conversion actions in the “All conv.” and “All conv. Value” columns. Sample below:
| Conversion goal setting | Conversion action setting | Bidding is optimizing towards Conversion action | Conversion columns |
| Goal is used for optimization by the campaign | Primary | Yes | “Conversions”, “Conversion value” , “All Conv”, “All Conv value” |
| Secondary | No | “All conv.”, “All conv. value” | |
| Goal is not used for optimization by the campaign | Primary | No* | “All conv.”, “All conv. value” |
| Secondary | No | “All conv.”, “All conv. value” |
Troubleshooting
If you encounter issues with your Google Ads conversions, you can refer to the centralized guide to fix common issues with your conversion measurement. You can also troubleshoot your Google Ads tags.
