We like to bring you up to date with innovations and changes in our industry, and today we can report on one such event that will be happening in the next few weeks. It concerns pay-per-click and Adwords and the departure away from converted clicks that will be happening at the end of September, which will result in users having to use the more advanced ‘conversions’ metric.
Converted clicks are a long standing feature of Adwords, and they have been in existence on the platform since its launch in 2001. Infact both of these metrics have existed together for a number of years, but Google has decided that it now should proceed with just the one.
The specifics of the announcement show that converted clicks will stop on 21st September – so there is not long now before this date arrives. It is likely to affect users that look at Enhanced CPC and Target CPC, and they will now have to switch to the more detailed ‘conversion’ metric, which will allow multiple attributions to be seen. This is actually a change for the good, although of course if you are happy with the status quo and having the choice then you probably won’t be cheering!
Google is not going to leave users stranded and has promised email support in the form of a tool to help with the transition process. You can also make the adjustment yourself and compared to some things, it is actually not all that hard to do (finding the conversion settings section and changing to ‘conversions’ from ‘converted clicks’ is all it should take.)
From September also, cross device conversions will be included in the conversion column, as some people have reported that this is currently difficult to find.
It appears as though you will be able to make changes in the conversions metric section, so you can tailor it for your specific requirements. All individual figures (whether chosen or not) will then be tallied and appear on the ‘all conversions’ column (which is essentially the total number.) You will also have the choice of whether you want to count an action once or a number of times if you feel your action could be broken down into subsections or ‘sub-actions.’
If you are a fan of historical data then you will need to take action before this changes comes into effect. After the end of September all the reporting data will go, so download and backup anything you need from your soon to be ‘old converted clicks’ before this time.
This is another change to accept, but hopefully this one won’t cause too many problems!
To find out more on PPC reporting and metrics, visit our ppc management section.