Glossary
What is a conversion goal in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 2 October 2026
Short answer
A conversion goal is a group of conversion actions. Google says conversion actions are grouped together based on related categories to form conversion goals, which represent the type of transaction, for example Purchases, Contacts or Submit lead forms, and that these goals are used to drive bidding optimisation for your campaigns.
Google describes three kinds. Standard goals form on their own: conversion actions that you add are automatically grouped into conversion goals based on their conversion category type. Account-default goals are standard goals you select for default bidding optimisation across all campaigns in your account. Custom goals can include any combination of primary and secondary conversion actions. Google labels them for advanced users, says that generally they aren't recommended in most cases, and says you're only able to bid towards one custom goal per campaign.
Google's advice on funnels is specific. If you have multiple standard conversion goals tracking different stages of the same conversion funnel, it recommends setting only one of them as the account-default goal, and for an e-commerce shoe retailer that wants more online shoe sales it recommends Purchase.
Google says only the primary conversion actions that your campaign optimises towards will appear in the Conversions and Conversion value columns in your campaign report. The consequence is ours to state: when the goals a campaign uses hold several primary actions, its conversion count is a sum of them, and the sum can mix very different things. Our post on seeing conversions by individual action shows how to take it apart.
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.