Glossary
What are account-default conversion goals in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 2 October 2026
Short answer
Account-default goals are the conversion goals Google Ads applies across your account. Google says that if you enable the account default setting for a conversion goal, the primary conversion actions within that goal will be tracked as conversions in your reporting and used for bidding across all your campaigns, except those where you've set up campaign-specific goals.
Two settings have to agree. Google says that for an individual conversion action to be used for measurement and bidding by default across campaigns, it must be marked as a primary action, and the account-default setting, which is set at the conversion goal level, must be enabled as well. Google adds that the default setting for most conversion actions is to include data in the Conversions column. App campaigns are outside all of this: Google says that for them you always set the conversion actions for bidding and reporting at the campaign level, and account-default goals aren't applicable.
Unticking a goal does not make it disappear. In Google's clothing shop example, the add to basket goal is unticked so the automated bid strategy optimises only towards purchases and reporting shows only purchase conversions, but data for the basket goal is still included in the All conversions column. Google also says that if you optimise a campaign towards a campaign-specific goal and remove all conversion actions from that goal, the system automatically reverts to using your account-default conversion goals for that campaign's bidding and reporting.
Google's campaign-specific goals page says changes made to your account-level goals won't be applied to campaigns that aren't strictly using account-level goals. Our practice follows from that: before changing the default, we list which campaigns use their own goals, because those are the ones the change will not reach.
We check this on every account we run
Riibon ties Meta and Google Ads back to outcomes measured outside the platforms, payments and bookings, so the number a decision rests on is one the business would recognise. When the platform and the business disagree, we show both and say which one we trusted.
Ask the Riibon app what your own account is counting as a conversion. It is free, with no time limit and no card. Or book a call and we run it for you.