Last week I started seeing this taunting message in my AdWords account saying how Google Conversion Tracking was now better than ever. Normally, I would jump for joy and count my lucky stars that Google was improving my user experience once again. However, on this occasion I chuckled and barely restrained myself from swearing out loud. Why?

Busted

Just as Google lauds its conversion tracking I am working with two different companies to get their AdWords conversion tracking to work right. One had been told by Google that tracking conversions over multiple domains (his shopping cart was on a separate URL from the main site) was broken in AdWords and wasn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. Use Analytics they said. But Analytics doesn’t track conversion to ad versions, so no more testing ad copy for conversion rate. Not even a sorry from Google on that one. The other company had the code installed correctly, was seeing the Google site stats image on the thank you page, but no conversions were being reported.

Fixed, but with no explanation.

The first company ended up moving their shopping cart to their main site to solve the problem. Thanks a lot Google. The second company bugged Google until they got an email explaining that conversion tracking was now working and that a test conversion performed by Google has been run. All better. But still no explanation of why it was broken in the first place. Do they realize that without all the time and effort put into verification, this company could have gone weeks with no conversion data? Poor customer service I say, and if someone important enough at Google reads this and wants to help repair their image, please post a comment and I’ll provide you my email.