Google Ads has proven to be a hugely successful acquisition channel for countless businesses since its launch in 2000, under the name Google AdWords.

It's hard to imagine that, once upon a time, there were just 350 advertisers using the immensely powerful platform.

The success of Google Ads has seen the platform become a critical part of many digital marketing strategies and it has gone through many changes over the years, with the most obvious being the change over to Google Ads in 2018.

The continual addition of ways to monitor where website conversions are generated makes Google Ads a really effective part of tracking performance and identifying what is working well and what needs to be changed.

New sections introduced to Google Ads tracking options

In February 2020, an update to Google Ads splits the tracking options into two sections – sales and leads. Under the sales actions, users are able to monitor ad clicks that lead to the actions: ‘add to cart’, subscribe’ and ‘begin checkout’.

Under the lead generation section, you are able to monitor ad clicks that result in: book appointment, submit lead forms, sign-up, request quote, get directions and outbound clicks.

By providing this even more granular level of analysis, advertisers can refine their PPC campaigns to generate better results. They can identify stages of the customer journey that require further optimisation. They develop a stronger understanding of what actions are driven depending on the content of each ad they design.

Conversion action sets

These new tracking options work really well with the Conversion Action Sets function, which allows users to group sets of conversion actions together, enabling greater success with smart bidding strategies. 

To do this, you will need to set up conversion tracking. You can then use the function to group the conversions that you are intending to drive the same actions across the different campaigns you are running. You need to have set up at  least two conversion actions to allow you to be able to create a conversion action set.

Evaluating your PPC performance

If you'd like help evaluating the performance of your Paid Search efforts, Optiminder can help by carrying out a PPC Audit for you. We can help you analyse the effectiveness of your campaigns, identify any hidden issues, discover valuable missed opportunities and refine existing campaigns to make them more effective.