If you’re a PPC advertiser and have regular active conversions coming through your account, you probably haven’t had the need to visit the Conversion action section of your Google Ads recently. But, be sure you do! As of July 30, 2021, Google started Marie Kondo-ing a few things – as in removing any conversion actions that haven’t trigger recently, or you know, “sparked joy” for those of us who still get giddy seeing them pour in.
If you visit your Conversion actions section in Google Ads, you’ll notice that they may have automatically removed and archived any conversion actions that haven’t recorded data in the last 13 months. To be sure, no website code was removed, just the action itself in Google Ads, and if that’s concerning to you – we’ll tell you how to get them back into your account in three easy steps.
- Login to your Google Ads account
- Navigate to Tools > Measurement > Conversions
- Filter the conversions using the status “All removed” and when you see a red circle – meaning it was removed – click it and change to “Enabled”
It’s that simple! But why Google, are you removing our conversions? To many marketers, it’s not a surprise to find that more mature Google Ads accounts are overloaded with tons of old or non-functioning tags (though some accounts we reviewed don’t have tracking at all it seems!). All of this clutter makes it challenging to understand what is working, what isn’t and what actions matter most.
A change previous to this one in another attempt to declutter and better optimize your Google Ads account, was allowing advertisers to choose which actions to include in their conversion columns and which ones would be used for bid algorithms. That change was huge for our team and allowed us to still track accounts that matter, but only optimize to the ones that matter MOST and contribute to our client’s bottom line.
Another recent change has been allowing advertisers to assign and track conversion actions for specific campaigns by making an association between the two. We’ve found that change helpful for advertisers who run multiple websites out of one Google Ads account – as it’s helped ensure the right action is tracked in the right campaign, eliminating that potential cross-over between the various sites.
Want to learn more about conversion tracking in Google Ads and how to best optimize to what matters most? Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for all the latest news in PPC or get in touch with us directly here.