What makes an action worth counting?
Count an action as a conversion if it puts money in the bank, or leads to money often enough that you would pay for it. A completed purchase passes. A booking passes. A call longer than a minute usually passes. A visit to the contact page does not, and neither does a click on a map link, though both can be tracked as signals as long as they are kept out of the total.
Getting this right pays, because ad accounts treat conversions as the goal. Google's and Meta's automated bidding spend your budget finding more of whatever you count. Count page views and they will find you page viewers.
How did a Dubbo vet clinic's 212 conversions shrink to 43 bookings? (example figures)
A vet clinic in Dubbo spends $1,500 a month on Google Ads. The account reports 212 conversions, a cost per conversion of about $7. The practice manager opens the conversion actions to see what was being counted.
| Conversion action | Count | A booking? |
|---|---|---|
| Viewed the contact page | 120 | No, a page view |
| Clicked the phone number on the website | 41 | Some, not all; it overlaps with calls |
| Called from the ad, over 60 seconds | 28 | Mostly: 20 booked an appointment |
| Completed an online booking | 23 | Yes |
| Bookings the clinic can stand behind | 43 | 23 online plus 20 by phone |
The real cost per booking was about $35 ($1,500 ÷ 43), five times the figure on the account's front page. Worse, the bidding had spent months chasing contact page views, because those were the largest and cheapest conversion it was told about. The fix took twenty minutes: online bookings and long calls became the conversions that count, and the rest became signals the clinic can still look at.
What are primary and secondary conversion actions?
Google Ads splits conversion actions into two kinds. Primary actions appear in the Conversions column and are what Smart Bidding works towards; secondary actions are recorded in the All conversions column and leave bidding alone (Google Ads Help, About primary and secondary conversion actions). For the clinic, bookings and long calls are primary. Contact page views and phone-number clicks are secondary. Meta's version of the same choice is the conversion event you pick when you set up an ad set, and Google Analytics 4 calls its counted actions key events.
What happens when your conversion actions are wrong?
CoraVision reads them as they are set, so a wrong action means a wrong figure: it takes conversions and conversion value from Google Ads, results and their value from Meta, and key events from Google Analytics 4 every night once those accounts are connected. The CoraVision dashboard's Trust Score is there to show how far those numbers can be trusted. When an action needs moving from primary to secondary, Cora points at the setting on your own screen and you change it; CoraVision never edits your account.
Questions
Why does Google Ads show more conversions than I had customers?
Usually because several actions are counted together, or one person is counted more than once. Google Ads can count every conversion after a click or only one, and a lead form counted every time means a person who sends it twice is two leads. Set lead actions to count one per click.
What is a micro conversion?
A small step on the way to a sale, such as adding to cart, watching a video or opening the pricing page. Watching them tells you where people stall. Bidding on them tells Google to find more people who do small things, which is rarely what you want.
What is conversion value?
The dollar figure attached to each conversion. For a purchase it is the order total. For a lead you can enter an estimate, such as what a lead is worth to you on average, so the ad account can tell a $3,000 enquiry from a $30 one.