Google Ad Grants: Smart Goals in Google Analytics
Smart Goals are an easy way to use your best visits as conversions. Smart Goals use machine learning to examine dozens of signals about your website visits to determine which of those are most likely to result in a conversion.
Each visit is assigned a score, with the “best” visits being translated into Smart Goals. Some examples of the signals included in the Smart Goals model are session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser.
We recommend creating a Smart Goal and importing it into your Google Ad Grants account as a conversion. You can then optimize your Google Ad Grants account for your best quality traffic. Smart Goals are especially useful if you aren’t currently tracking any other meaningful goals in Google Analytics.
To use Smart Goals, your Google Ad Grants and Google Analytics accounts must be linked. You also need to have had at least 500 clicks in the past 30 days. You also need to enable data sharing with “With other Google products only” in your Google Analytics account settings.
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
- Select the Admin tab and navigate to the desired view.
- In the VIEW column, click Goals.
- Click + NEW GOAL.
- Select Smart Goal (if available). If this option is greyed out, it means you have not sent 500 clicks to this view in the past 30 days.
- Give your Smart Goal a name (e.g. “Smart Goal”) and click Save.
You can then import your Smart Goal as a conversion in your Google Ad Grants account as described in a previous blog post.
For more advice on getting the most from your Google Ad Grant, get your free copy of our best practice guide, ‘Unleashing Your Google Ad Grant’.
