Updating your conversion goals

Conversion goals help you organize your conversion actions so that you can more easily optimize toward your advertising objectives. Learn more About conversion goals.

Conversion goals are also used for campaign optimization and bidding, which are 2 key tools in driving campaign performance. Since changes that you make to your conversion goals can meaningfully impact your campaigns, we’ve improved the conversion goal management experience in Google Ads to:

• Provide more insight into the relationship between conversion goals and campaigns
• Inform you about the potential impact of removing or recategorizing your conversion actions
• Make it easier for you to manage your conversion goals and campaigns for the best possible performance

In this article you’ll learn how to:

• Change your conversion action to a different conversion goal: If your conversion action is miscategorized, or is grouped under a conversion goal like “Page View” or “Other”, you should move your conversion action to a more relevant conversion goal that have semantic meaning, such as “Purchase” or “Sign-up”, which helps to unlock bidding improvements and optimization opportunities. Moving a conversion action to a different conversion goal may affect your campaign optimization and performance.
• Remove your inactive conversion actions: If your conversion action is inactive, or is no longer meaningful to your business, you should remove it from your conversions table to avoid unnecessary clutter. Removed conversions will no longer appear in the conversions table by default, but they will be archived and you can re-enable them anytime. Removing a conversion action may affect your campaign optimization and performance.
• Bulk update your campaigns’ conversion goals: As a best practice, you should ensure that your campaigns are optimizing to all relevant conversion goals. Bulk editing allows you to edit multiple campaigns’ conversion goals at the same time, which is particularly helpful for campaigns using campaign-specific goals. Changing your campaigns’ conversion goals may impact your campaign optimization and reporting. We recommend carefully reviewing your changes before you apply them in bulk.

Change your conversion action to a different conversion goal

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
2. Click the Conversions drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Summary.
4. Hover over the conversion action you want to change.
5. Click on the 3-dot icon and select Change to another conversion goal.
6. In the drop-down menu that appears, click the conversion goal you want to change to.
7. In the slider panel that appears, review your changes:
   1. Where the conversion action is moving to
   2. How the move will impact the makeup of your conversion goals
   3. If and how the move will impact the conversion volume and value of your conversion goals
   4. If and how the move will affect your campaign goal settings
8. To review how these changes impact the goal settings and performance of your campaigns, click Review campaigns. We recommend that you do this and click Download campaigns in CSV to keep a record of impacted campaigns.
9. Click Back.
10. To accept the changes, click Save.

If one or more of your conversion goals is no longer following conversion goal best practices, we recommend taking action to fix the conversion goal following this change.

Remove your inactive conversion actions

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon .
2. Click the Conversions drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Summary. You have 2 ways of removing a conversion action using the 3-dot icon or the check-box in front of the conversion action name:
   1. 3-dot icon
      1. Hover over the conversion action you want to change.
      2. Click on the 3-dot icon and select Remove conversion action.
      3. In the slider panel that appears, review your changes:
         • What conversion action is being removed
         • How the removal will impact the makeup of your conversion goal
         • If and how the removal will impact the conversion volume and value of your conversion goals
         • If and how the move will affect your campaign goal settings
      4. To review how these changes impact the goal settings and performance of your campaigns, click Review campaigns. We recommend that you do this and download the CSV of impacted campaigns.
      5. Click Back.
      6. To accept the changes, click Save.
   2. Check box
      1. Click the box beside the conversion action name.
      2. Click Remove. We will archive or remove your conversion action. If one or more of your conversion goals is no longer following conversion goal best practices, we recommend taking action to fix the conversion goal following this change.

Bulk update your campaigns’ conversion goals

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Campaigns.
4. Select the campaigns you’d like to update.
5. Click Edit in the blue selection bar.
6. Select Update conversion goals. Chose the option you want to apply to your campaigns:
   • Change Goal settings: This enables you to change your campaign optimization settings to either:
     • Use account default goals where your campaigns will use all account-default goals
     • Use campaign specific goals where you’re able to choose desired goals
   • Add goals: This enables you to add additional conversion goals in campaigns that use campaign-specific goal settings.
   • Remove Goals: This allows you to remove goals in campaigns that use campaign-specific goal settings.
7. Click Apply to implement the change.

Best Practices

Below are basic conversion goals best practices to get the most out of campaign performance in Google Ads:

• Categorize your conversion actions: Whenever possible, your conversion actions should be grouped into standard conversion goals, such as “Purchase” or “Contact”, and these standard goals should be used for optimizing your campaigns. This alignment allows us to optimize your Ads experience and campaign performance to drive results. You shouldn't categorize conversion actions under conversion goals that don't have semantic meaning, such as "Other" or "Page View", if a goal exists that matches the description of your conversion action.
• Include at least one primary conversion action: Each conversion goal should've at least one primary conversion action grouped within it. This ensures that campaigns using automated bidding can optimize towards actions that drive value to your business. Primary conversion actions will appear in the “Conversions” column in your reports.
• Add your goals to all relevant campaigns: In order for a campaign to optimize to a particular conversion goal, it needs to be included in that campaign’s goals. All conversion goals using the “account-default” setting will be automatically used in campaigns using the account-default setting. However, if you have campaigns using campaign-specific goals, or conversion goals not opted into the account-default setting, you will need to manually add goals from the campaign settings or via bulk edits, which are outlined in the instructions below.

Related links

• Using conversion goals to guide new campaigns
• Manage conversion goals from the conversions summary