If you track several actions in Google Ads, you need to decide which should be primary conversions and which should be secondary.
This distinction matters because your primary conversions are normally the results you want your campaigns to target. If the wrong action is marked as primary, Google Ads could optimise towards something that does not represent a genuine lead or sale.
A visit to your contact page may be encouraging, for example, but it does not mean that somebody actually contacted you.
In this guide, I’ll explain the difference between primary and secondary conversions, how I decide which setting to use and how those choices affect bidding.
Primary vs Secondary Conversions: The Short Answer
A primary conversion should represent one of the most important outcomes for your business.
For a lead-generation business, that would normally be somebody getting in touch. For an e-commerce business, it would usually be a completed purchase.
Secondary conversions are actions that are useful to monitor but are not the main objective of the campaign. These could include:
- Visiting a contact page
- Adding a product to the basket
- Beginning the checkout process
- Viewing another important page
- Completing an earlier step towards the main conversion
Google currently states that primary actions appear in the Conversions column and are used for bidding when their standard goal is selected. Secondary actions are observation-only by default and appear in All conversions instead. You can read Google’s explanation of primary and secondary conversion actions for the current documented behaviour.
| Primary conversion | Secondary conversion | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Represents a main business result | Monitors an earlier or supporting action |
| Lead-generation example | Form submission or completed contact action | Visit to the contact page |
| E-commerce example | Completed purchase | Add to basket or begin checkout |
| Reporting | Included in Conversions | Included in All conversions |
| Used for bidding | Normally, when its goal is selected | Not by default |
What Should Be a Primary Conversion?
Your primary conversions should be the actions that matter most to the business.
The simplest question to ask is:
Would I be happy for Google Ads to optimise the campaign towards this action?
If the answer is yes, it may be suitable as a primary conversion.
For lead generation, the primary action should normally confirm that somebody has actually made contact. It should not merely show that they visited a contact page.
For e-commerce, the clearest primary conversion is normally a completed purchase. Adding a product to the basket is useful information, but it does not generate revenue on its own.
The important thing is that the action represents the result you genuinely want from the campaign.
What Should Be a Secondary Conversion?
Secondary conversions help you understand what people do before completing your main conversion.
For an online shop, you might monitor:
- A product view
- An add-to-basket action
- The beginning of checkout
- A completed purchase
The earlier steps could be secondary conversions, while the final purchase remains primary.
For lead generation, visiting the contact page could be secondary, while submitting the contact form is primary.
This gives you more information about how people move through the website without telling the campaign that every earlier action is equally valuable.
Using Secondary Conversions to Understand Drop-Off
Tracking these smaller actions can help you build a simple conversion funnel within your reporting.
Imagine that 100 visitors view a product, 30 add it to their basket, 20 begin checkout and five make a purchase.
That pattern gives you somewhere to start investigating. If many visitors reach the basket but very few continue to checkout, there may be something at that stage putting them off.
You can use the same approach for lead generation. If plenty of users visit the contact page but very few submit the form, the page or form may need further investigation.
Secondary conversions therefore provide useful context. They help you understand where people drop out without replacing the genuine lead or sale as your main objective.
Common Primary Conversion Mistakes
One of the most common mistakes I see is an action being treated as primary when it is not an actual conversion.
Tracking Contact-Page Visits as Leads
Some lead-generation accounts count every visit to the contact page as a conversion.
However, arriving on that page does not mean the visitor completed the form or made contact. If this is set as primary, the account may report more conversions than the business actually received.
The contact-page visit can still be useful as a secondary conversion.
Tracking the Wrong Checkout Page
E-commerce websites can contain several pages or URLs associated with checkout.
If the tracking rule is not specific enough, it may record somebody entering checkout rather than reaching the final confirmation page. This can interfere with the conversion data and make purchase numbers look better than they really are.
The primary purchase action should only fire when the completed purchase has been confirmed.
If you are unsure whether an action fires correctly, follow my guide to testing Google Ads conversion tracking.
How to Change a Conversion Between Primary and Secondary
The setting is available in your Google Ads account. For the full walkthrough, including checks before and after saving, follow how to change primary and secondary conversions in google ads.
Are Secondary Conversions Used for Bidding?
Secondary conversions are not used for bidding by default.
They are designed for observation and appear in the All conversions column. This means you can still use them for reporting and diagnosing drop-off, but they should not be confused with the conversions shown in the main Conversions column.
There is one important exception: Google says that actions included in a custom goal are used for bidding even when the individual action is labelled secondary.
Check your campaign goals as well as the action optimisation setting if you want to be certain about what a campaign is targeting.
You can also read my explanation of target CPA in Google Ads if you want to understand how conversion data relates to automated bidding.
Should You Track Both Primary and Secondary Conversions?
In many accounts, there is value in tracking both.
Primary conversions tell you whether the advertising is delivering the result the business needs. Secondary conversions help explain what happened before that result.
However, more conversion actions do not automatically produce better information. Each one should have a clear purpose, fire at the correct point and be classified properly.
If Google Ads is reporting plenty of activity but very few genuine enquiries or sales, my guide to Google Ads getting clicks but no conversions covers the other areas worth checking.
Final Thoughts
Primary conversions should represent the outcomes you mainly want your campaigns to achieve, such as completed enquiries or purchases.
Secondary conversions are there to help you observe earlier stages, such as contact-page visits, adding products to the basket or beginning checkout.
Setting these up correctly gives you more useful reporting while keeping your campaign focused on the actions that matter most.
If you are unsure whether your campaigns are targeting the right actions, I can review the setup as part of my free Google Ads audit.