[GA4] About conversions

A conversion is created in Google Ads from a Google Analytics key event and provides a consistent way of measuring important actions in both Google Analytics and Google Ads. A conversion helps you improve your marketing strategy by providing consistent conversion counts across platforms so you can understand and optimize your ad campaigns. Unlike key events, conversions are eligible for bidding and reporting in Google Ads.

To create a conversion, identify an key event that measures the important interaction and then in Google Ads, create a new conversion that's based on the Google Analytics key event. After you create the conversion in Google Ads, the conversion data is shared between Google Ads and Google Analytics so you're viewing the same data across platforms.

The following flow shows how to create a Google Ads conversion from a Google Analytics key event. In short, if an event is important to your business's success, you can mark the event as a key event in Analytics. Then, if the key event is important for optimizing ad campaigns and measuring their performance, create a conversion in Google Ads from the Analytics key event.

Event → Key Event → Conversion

By creating Google Ads conversions based on the key events, you can:

• Report on the same conversion counts between Google Ads and Analytics
• Bid against the conversions in your ad campaigns
• Build audiences for re-marketing purposes

In the Attribution settings in Google Analytics, you can choose from the following options under Channels that can receive credit, enabling you to determine which channels can receive credit for web conversions shared between Google Analytics and Google Ads:

• Google paid channels
• Paid and organic channels

Choosing the Google paid channels attribution setting lets you see conversions from Google Ads in your Google Analytics conversion reports. If you choose Paid and organic channels, you can report on conversions from both paid and organic sources in Google Analytics, providing a broader, cross-channel view of your conversions beyond Google Ads paid channels.

Changing this setting applies going forward and to all linked Google Ads accounts. It may impact the conversions you create in Google Ads for bidding and reporting. These changes may take a few days before they're reflected in your Google Ads campaigns and reports.