Paid media · [8/28/26] · [Mary Smucker]
Smart Bidding does exactly what you tell it to. If a page view counts as a conversion in your account, Google will spend your budget finding more people who view pages. Many accounts we audit have at least one setting like this, and it’s usually hiding in plain sight.
The good news: it takes about five minutes to check.
What we found in a recent audit
A multi-location services company asked us to look at their conversion tracking. On the surface the account looked healthy, with thousands of conversions in four months. Underneath:
- The biggest “conversion” was a page view. One GA4 event, imported into Google Ads as a primary conversion, fired every time someone loaded a page partway through the estimate form. It recorded about 2,000 conversions in four months, more than all the phone calls and quote requests combined.
- It counted every load. Set to “Every,” so a person who refreshed the page or came back to it counted again.
- Calls counted repeats too, with a 60-day window, so the same caller could become several conversions.
- A goal was misconfigured. The “Submit lead form” goal had no working primary action left, because every action in it had been built on Universal Analytics, which stopped collecting data in 2023.
Smart Bidding was doing its job. It had just been handed the wrong job.
The five-minute check
In Google Ads, go to Goals → Summary and Goals → Conversions, and look at these five things:
- Which actions are primary? Only primary actions steer bidding. Read each name and ask: is this a lead or a sale, or just a sign of interest? Page views, scroll depth, time on site and video plays should be secondary.
- Where do the conversions come from? Sort by All conv. If the top action isn’t a real lead or sale, bidding is chasing it.
- How does each action count? Leads should almost always count “One.” “Every” is for purchases, where each one is real revenue.
- What is a GA4 import actually measuring? If an action comes from GA4, open GA4 → Admin → Events and check how the event is built. A custom event created from page_view with a URL rule counts page loads, not submissions.
- Are there warnings? Look for “Misconfigured,” “Needs attention” and “No recent conversions.” Old Universal Analytics actions are a common culprit.
What to do if you find a problem
- Make page-view and engagement actions secondary. You keep the data for reporting without steering bids toward it.
- Switch lead actions to “One.”
- Track the real submission. Fire a dedicated event when a form is successfully submitted, rather than relying on a thank-you page loading.
- Assign sensible values, so bidding can tell a quote request from a newsletter signup.
- Expect your reported numbers to drop. That’s the point. Fewer, truer conversions give Smart Bidding a better target, and your cost per lead starts meaning something.
- Give bidding a few weeks to adjust before judging the results.
The bottom line
If you haven’t looked at your primary conversions this year, look today. It’s the cheapest performance improvement in paid search.
Want a second pair of eyes? Send us your account and we’ll run the check with you. No question is too basic, and no account is too messy.