July 16th, 2010 | Published in Google Conversions
We recently announced a brand new section to AdWords reporting called AdWords Search Funnels and today we’d like to give you more in depth info about these very useful reports.
What are AdWords Search Funnels reports?
Search Funnels show you the AdWords ad click and impression behaviour that leads to a conversion on your site. A conversion could be a completed sale, form submission, time spent on your site etc.. These conversions are based on the completed action(s) you have specified with AdWords Conversion Tracking or from goals imported into AdWords from your Google Analytics account.
Now you can uncover the value of all keywords, ads and campaigns in your AdWords account, not just those related to the last click before a sale/lead.
Why is Search Funnels data useful?
The standard approach to conversion reporting traditionally focused on a customer’s last click on your ad. Search Funnels fills in the gaps on what happened before this last click!
Before completing a sale/form on your website, your customers have likely searched multiple times on Google. This means they may have searched using many different keywords and clicked on more than one of the ads in your AdWords account before they completed your defined conversion/action.
Tip:
- To get the most from AdWords Search Funnels reports it helps to have a good AdWords account structure. Check out this video for tips on improving your account layout.
- In addition you should always look at an appropriate amount of data before making business decisions. For example, looking at one month’s worth of data instead of one day’s, should give you a better picture of what’s happening in your account.
Interpreting AdWords Search Funnels reports
To start with, let’s explain some of the new metrics available within these reports:
- Assist clicks: Any click on your Google AdWords search ad that happened prior to the 'last click' before a conversion.
- Assist impressions: Any impression on your search ad that was not clicked and happened prior to a conversion.
- Path length (clicks): The total number of AdWords search ad clicks in your account (including the 'last click') that preceded a conversion.
- Assisted conversions: The number of conversions that were assisted by a particular campaign, ad-group or keyword. Assisted conversions do not include last click conversions.
- Last click conversions: The number of conversions that had a particular campaign, ad-group or keyword as the immediately preceding search ad click.
For a full glossary of all the new terms relating to Search Funnels check out this help centre article.
So let’s look at some of these new reports...
Below we’ve highlighted just two of the nine reports available in AdWords Search Funnels to give you an overview of the insights now available into your conversion path.
Assist clicks and impressions report
- See how many assisting clicks and impressions there are for each keyword, ad group or campaign in your AdWords account
- Identify which campaigns are contributing to conversions and adjust your bidding and budgets accordingly
- Optimise your keyword lists to ensure you have keyword variations included for strong assisting keywords
Top Paths report
- See the combination of keywords, ad groups and campaigns that were clicked on or seen before a conversion
- Look at how brand term campaigns compare to more general term campaigns
- If your brand terms and general terms are grouped together consider breaking out into different campaigns to gain further insights
What can you do next:
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If you have already set up Conversion Tracking or imported your Google Analytics goals into AdWords, log into your Google AdWords account and visit the ‘Reporting’ tab and select ‘Conversions’. (Not tracking conversions yet? Learn how to set up AdWords Conversion Tracking or import goals into AdWords from Google Analytics
- Select ‘Search Funnels’ from the left hand side of the next page
- Navigate through the nine report types on the left hand side to learn more about the ads and keywords that contribute to sales/leads on your site
- Re-evaluate keywords and ad text based on this data and adjust AdWords account settings or optimise ads and keywords accordingly
We hope you find these tips useful. If you’re already a Search Funnels user please share your experiences by leaving a comment below. And don’t forget to enter our Conversion Champion Challenge by July 31st and be in the running for a trip to Google Zurich, a website audit from a team of Google experts and $500 of free Google AdWords advertising!
In the new few weeks we’ll follow up with another deep-dive into using AdWords Search Funnels reports so check back soon.
Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team
