As a business owner, you probably want to measure every sale that you make. If you're generating leads too, you might want to track every sale, but only one, unique lead per ad click.
With conversion tracking, you have the flexibility to count conversions according to your business needs. For any conversion action, you can choose to count every conversion that happens after an interaction, or only one conversion that happens after an interaction. These counting choices can give you a better sense of your campaign performance and help you refine your bids. Your conversion counting choices will be reflected in the 'Conversion' columns, the 'All conversions' columns and the 'View-through conversion (VTC)' column.
This article explains the different options that you can set to tell Google Ads how to count your conversions. For more general information on conversion tracking, see About conversion tracking.
Counting options
There may be multiple conversion actions that you'll want to track because they reflect valuable activity for your business. You can select a different counting method for each conversion action.
To figure out which conversion counting option is best for each conversion action you track, let's take a closer look at the two counting settings:
- Every conversion: With this setting, Google Ads counts every conversion (per tracked conversion action) that happens after an ad interaction. This is a good choice if you'd like to track and improve your sales, because every sale likely adds value for your business.
Example
You own a travel booking website used to reserve both hotel rooms and rental cars. You'd like to see how your ads drive each type of booking, so you choose to count every conversion. When someone travelling to Chicago, Denver and New York books one hotel reservation in each city (three hotel reservations) and rental cars only in Chicago and Denver (two car reservations), this conversion setting will count five conversions.
- One conversion: With this setting, Google Ads counts only one conversion per ad click. This is a good choice if you're not interested in the number of sales, but in whether or not a certain kind of lead was generated. This is because usually only one, unique lead per ad click probably brings value to your business.
Example
You run an insurance company that offers home, car and life insurance, and measure conversions for each type of policy as a different conversion action. You'd like to see how well your ads drive people to fill in a form on your website requesting information about one or more insurance products.
You notice that people sometimes fill in multiple forms with different values for the same products. If the same person fills in three car insurance forms and two home insurance forms, using one conversion will show you two conversions: one for each conversion action.
You may also want to count one conversion for some conversion actions and every conversion for others.
Example
You run a financial services firm and use Google Ads to drive two conversions: sales of online tax software and leads for a personal consultation service. You notice that people often make multiple purchases of your tax software – perhaps separate purchases for personal and corporation taxes. However, people also fill in multiple lead forms – maybe for different office locations or appointment times.
While you would like to track every sale, you want to track only the unique leads. You set the software sales conversion action to count every conversion, and the lead conversion action to count one conversion. If a click on your ad leads to two sales and two leads, you will see three conversions: one for each sale, and one for the unique lead
No matter which counting method you decide on, for each conversion action, you can see the average number of conversions made by customers who convert at least one time by looking at the 'repeat rate' in the 'Conversion actions' table. Your repeat rate is the average number of conversions you receive based on interactions that lead to at least one conversion. It’s effectively the number of conversions you would have recorded using the 'every conversion' setting divided by the number you would record using the 'one conversion' setting.
The repeat rate does not change if you change your count setting from 'one conversion' to 'every conversion' or from 'every conversion' to 'one conversion'. When your 'Count' setting is 'one conversion', the repeat rate can help you identify what your conversion reporting could look like if the counting setting was set to 'every conversion'. If the repeat rate is 1.5 and you recorded 10 conversions with the count setting as 'one conversion' that means that switching to 'every conversion' would result in 1.5 times as many conversions (1.5*10 = 15). Any changes to conversion count settings will only apply to future conversion reporting.
Note: In some circumstances, it doesn't make sense to compare the repeat rate for app conversions across different apps. This is because there are different factors that cause different apps to have different target users, who may have different spending habits. Some of these factors could include app optimisation types, operating system (iOS vs. Android), other factors or any combination of these factors.
Instructions
In the settings for each conversion action, you’ll see a 'Count' setting. You can change this setting when you set up your conversion action, or you can edit the setting for an existing conversion action by following the instructions below.
You can change this setting at any time for any of your conversion actions. Just bear in mind that the changes will only apply to future conversions for a particular conversion action, and won't apply to a conversion action's past data.
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click the Goals icon
.
- Click the Conversions drop-down, then click Summary.
- Click the name of the conversion action that you want to edit.
- Click Edit settings.
- Click Count and select One or Every.
- Click Save, then click Done.
.Note: Default count settings
If you don't make a choice, then Google Ads will automatically use the default count setting. These defaults vary by conversion source and are based on the way most advertisers want to count that particular kind of conversion:
- Every conversion is the default for website, in-app actions, Analytics transactions, clicks on your number on your mobile website and import conversion actions.
- One conversion is the default for calls from ads, Analytics goals, calls to a phone number on your website and app install conversion actions. For app installs, you can't edit the count setting, because more than one download of an app from the same click doesn't add value to your business.
Security and privacy for conversion tracking
Google has strict security standards. Google Ads only collects data on sites and apps where you have configured tracking.
Ensure that you provide users with clear and comprehensive information about the data that you collect on your sites, apps and other properties. Make sure that you also get consent for that collection where required by law or any applicable Google policies governing user consent, including Google’s EU user consent policy.
