Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Tracking Multiple Types of Conversions

As a best practice, we try to limit conversion tracking to one conversion type. Ask yourself: What is the most important action you want your visitor to take on your site that leads most directly to money in your pocket?

For example, say that you sell a product, and you also offer a newsletter to your visitors. The product sale is your money maker, and the newsletter is a way to keep in contact and possibly start a relationship with prospects to turn them into a customer. The key conversion here is the sale, not the signup. You want to measure sales to determine the ROI of your ads and keywords.

On the other hand, we have a number of clients who achieve great conversion rates in getting visitors to join their e-mail lists, and who nurture those leads over weeks and sometimes months. Even though the “money” conversion is a sale, we need to track leads as well so we don't accidentally do anything to depress that number. In that case, we're forced to track multiple conversion types, which makes everything that much more complicated. (But hey, that's why we get the big-but-extremely-reasonable-all-things-considered bucks.)

The data you see in the main interface merges all the conversion types that you're collecting. 1-per-click columns reflect unique customers. If someone signs up for an e-mail list and buys a product within 30 days of the last ad click, she converted twice, but Google adds just one to the 1-per-click column, signifying one new ...