Conversion Optimization | Search Engine Advertising | Web Analytics

Google Analytics’ Smart Goals for AdWords: Better Than No Goals

Every smart marketer knows that you cannot optimize what you cannot measure. We have showed you how to set up goals in Google Analytics to measure conversions on your website, so that you can optimize your marketing efforts.

Google has now created Smart Goals for businesses that cannot measure conversions online. This might be because these businesses’ conversions occur offline or because they lack the ability to set up conversion tracking.

Smart Goals allows businesses with no other way to track conversions to optimize their AdWords campaigns.

How Does Smart Goals Work? 

Smart Goals measure the visits to your website that are most likely to lead to conversions.  Smart Goals takes the anonymized conversion data shared by thousands of websites, and applies machine learning to determine which factors indicate that a visitor is likely to convert. It then applies this logic to your website’s visits.

A Smart Goal conversion happens if a visit to your website matches the Smart Goal definition of a likely conversion. This estimate will help you understand how effective your online marketing campaigns are.

Who Can Use Smart Goals?

You can use Smart Goals if:

  1. Your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts are linked.
  2. Your Google Analytics view tracks a website (not a mobile app).
  3. Your linked AdWords account sent at least 1,000 clicks to your Google Analytics view in the month before you set up Smart Goals.
  4. Your Google Analytics view does not receive more than 1 million hits per day.
  5. The Data Sharing setting: “Google products and services” is checked in your Google Analytics account settings.

Smart Goals are not yet available for all accounts. The feature is scheduled to roll out in December 2015 and January 2016.

Google Support provides detailed instructions on how to set up Smart Goals.

Smart Goal setup

Who Should Use Smart Goals?

The best way to measure conversions is still to set up goals in Google Analytics. For Google AdWords you can also use AdWords conversion tracking. Amazee Metrics does not recommend using Smart Goals unless there is truly no other option.

If there is no other way to measure conversions, Smart Goals provides an estimate that marketers can use to optimize their AdWords campaigns. Smart Goals are better than no goals.

Do you need help measuring conversions on your website?  Amazee Metrics can even help you keep track of offline conversions. Send me an email.