Is your conversion tracking teaching Google the right lessons?

This article is part of a series on how I find high-leverage opportunities to make Google Ads more profitable..

This part of the profitability review maps the conversion information being sent to Google Ads.

At this stage, I’m not investigating how Google is using the conversion information, just what's available.

The questions in my audit template

I record the following information about every conversion action:

Name
What it means
Eligibility
How it's sent
Data sent

As before, the name and what it means are there to make sure everyone is clear about it.

Eligibility records the exact conditions that must be met before the event is counted as a conversion.

For a call, this might include a minimum duration.
For a form, it might mean that the submission passed a spam filter.
For a qualified lead, it might require a particular status to be selected in the CRM.

How it's sent records how the conversion reaches Google Ads. This could be:

automatically by Google,
by a tracking tag on the website,
via an integration with the CRM or call tracking system,
uploaded via Data Manager.

Data sent records the information included with the conversion.

Depending on the method, this might include:

The click identifier like gclid, wbraid or gbraid.
The time the conversion happened.
The conversion value and currency.
Hashed email and/or phone number for enhanced conversions.

Why this is important

Google's automated bidding does (more or less) what you ask it to. If you ask it to get you as many leads as possible it will, regardless of lead quality.

It's usually more profitable to ask it to get qualified leads or sales.

But you can only do this if Google knows which leads are qualified, or which turn into sales. business is telling Google which leads are qualified or which turn into sales. And, if what the business tells Google is accurate and reasonably complete.

The next part of the profitability review looks at who makes strategic decions, and what data they base them on.

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