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Can someone explain Google’s conversion windows?
Hi, I’m new to PPC and have been doing a lot of reading. I came across this on Google’s ‘About conversion windows’ article and I just can’t understand it. Can someone help please?
“Here’s an example of how a conversion window would work if someone interacted with your ad on March 1:
March 1: Your conversion window is set to 30 days. Conversions between now and March 30 will be counted for this interaction.
March 7: You change your conversion window to 10 days. Conversions before March 10 will be counted for the March 1 interaction.
March 16: You changed the conversion window again to 20 days. A March 13 conversion from this interaction, which wasn’t counted within the last window, won’t be retroactively counted. But future conversions before March 20 will be counted for the March 1 interaction.”
Sorry if this seems obvious but I am unable to understand the logic – When you change the conversion window to 10 days, why won’t conversion attribution change from March 7? Why are conversions of March 10 counted for the previous interaction? Likewise, why will conversions from March 13 not be counted at all when the change was made on March 16? And why are conversions between March 16 and 20 getting counted for the March 1 interaction?
I am so confused…please help
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1 Reply
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This is simplified, but Google looks at the conversion event and then looks to see if that user interacted with an ad. If so, It then checks if that window matches your conversion window. If it does it registers a conversion. If not, it doesn’t. Google then doesn’t look at that interaction again – reporting is done.
You will not be able to retroactively change reporting because conversions get attributed at the time of conversion. So when you change the window any future conversions that fall within the window can be attributed, but not prior ones that would have counted under the new window – since they were already attributed (or voided) with the old window.
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