Google AdWords Assisted Conversions (Part 6 of 6)
Columns are very important in measuring the success of your campaign. Options include Impressions, Clicks, Click Through Rate, Impressions Share, Conversions and much more. A tool that users don’t utilize enough is the assisted conversions column. We will be covering this important detail in the final installment of the Google AdWords series.
Where to Find Assisted Conversions
If you already know where to add custom columns in AdWords, jump to the next heading. Otherwise, here is a brief description of where to find the custom columns.
- Sign in to AdWords and open your account
- Go on All online campaigns
- Click on Columns above the graph
- Choose Customize columns in the drop down menu
Assisted Clicks
Assisted clicks occur only when more than one search ad has been clicked prior to a conversion. Any search ad click that happens before the last click immediately before a conversion is referred to as an assist click. Since assist clicks are displayed on a keyword level, the definition can be adapted to make it more precise.
The Assist Click column displays any number of clicks on a search ad triggered by the same keyword that happened prior to the last click that leads to a conversion.
In order to fully understand assist clicks, I have created three concrete examples of real life scenarios and how the results are displayed in the assist clicks custom column in Google AdWords.
Example 1:
A user searches on Google for black shoes clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. A week later, the same user searches on Google for brown shoes, clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. One week later, the same user searches on Google for white shoes, clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. Two days later the same user searches on Google for black boots and converts.
The process would look like this:
black shoes > brown shoes > white shoes > black boots > conversion
Since assist clicks exclude the last click directly prior to the conversion, we can cross out. Any other clicks before black boots is an assist click. Therefore we have three assist clicks (black shoes, brown shoes, and white shoes). Keep in mind that the assist click column does not display a number of assist clicks per conversion but the number of assist clicks per keyword.
Assist clicks are marked in green for the same process as displayed above:
black shoes > brown shoes > white shoes > > conversion
The assist clicks column would, therefore, display the following:
Example 2:
A user searches on Google for black shoes clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. 1 week later, the same user searches on Google for brown shows, clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. A week later, the same user searches on Google for black shoes again, clicks the ad and doesn’t convert. Two days later the same user searches on Google for black boots and converts.
The process would look like this:
black shoes > brown shoes > black shoes > black boots > conversion
Since assist clicks exclude the last click directly prior to the conversion, we can cross out black boots. Any other clicks before black boots is an assist click. Therefore, we once again have three assist clicks (black shoes, brown shoes, and black shoes). Keep in mind that the assist click column does not display a number of assist clicks per conversion but the number of assist clicks per keyword.
Assist clicks are marked in green for the same process as displayed above:
black shoes > brown shoes > black shoes > > conversion
The assist clicks column would, therefore, display the following:
In comparison to Example 1, the keyword black shoes now shows two assist clicks because it assisted twice.
Example 3:
Now let’s look at what happens when two different users searching and some of the keywords are overlapping.
USER 1:
black shoes > brown shoes > white shoes > black boots > conversion
Assist clicks are marked in green for this process:
black shoes > brown shoes > white shoes > > conversion
USER 2:
black shoes > brown sandals > white sandals > black boots > conversion
Assist clicks are marked in green for this process:
black shoes > brown sandals > white sandals > > conversion
As seen above, two different clients converted with different search funnels that both started with the same keyword.
The assist clicks column would, therefore, display the following:
In this case, the keyword black shoes assisted twice even though it assisted two different conversions. Since assist clicks aren’t displayed per conversion but per keyword, black shoes shows two assist clicks.
Example of Using Assist Click Insights
Understanding assist clicks can prevent optimization mistakes such as the pausing of keywords that start a search which ultimately ends up in a conversion. For instance, imagine the following scenario:
The keyword black boots regularly get a significant amount of profitable conversions but the keyword black shoes does not. As a matter of fact, you can see in the account that the keyword black shoes accumulates a lot of clicks but rarely or never converts. You consequently pause the keyword black shoes to allocate more budget to the keyword black boots. For no apparent reason, immediately after having taken that action the conversion rate for the keyword black boots decreases dramatically.
What happened?
In order to find out, you add the custom column assist clicks because you suspect the keyword black shoes is the beginning of a search process that is closely related to searches who later search for black boots and convert. As the assist clicks columns shows in AdWords, this is, in fact, the case.
You can then revert the change that caused the issue based on the insights you have gained through the assist clicks column by reactivating the keyword black shoes.
Conclusion
Assist clicks can be essential when it comes to keyword optimization and understanding the search funnel report in Google AdWords. It provides detailed information about the relevance of each keyword to a number of conversions it has indirectly contributed to.
However, the concept must be fully understood in order to interpret the information correctly. Also, consider that the assist clicks column does not indicate the profitability of the clicks it displays.
