How to Set Up Primary vs Secondary Conversion Actions in Google Ads

There is a setting in every Google Ads account that decides what your entire campaign optimises for, and most advertisers never look at it. It is not a bid, not a keyword and not an ad text. It is the choice between primary and secondary google ads conversion actions. That single distinction determines what Smart Bidding trains its algorithm on, and therefore where your budget flows. Get it wrong, and the system will bid neatly and efficiently towards the wrong goal. In this article you will learn the difference, why it carries so much weight, and how to set it up correctly. This is part of our broader explanation of what SEA is.

What is the difference between primary and secondary?

Since Google restructured its conversion settings, you classify every conversion action as either primary or secondary. The difference is fundamental and frequently misunderstood.

A primary conversion action counts towards your bidding strategy. If you use an automated strategy such as Target CPA or Target ROAS, the algorithm trains itself on exactly these actions. It looks for people who are likely to complete a primary conversion and bids on them. Primary actions also appear in your main “Conversions” column.

A secondary conversion action is measured, but it does not steer your bids. It sits in a separate column, purely for observation. You see the data, you can analyse it, but the algorithm ignores it when bidding.

In other words: primary is the steering wheel, secondary is the speedometer. Both give you information, but only one determines direction. And that is exactly where things go wrong, because many accounts have ten primary actions that have nothing to do with each other.

Why this setting carries so much weight

Picture this: you sell a B2B service with a sales cycle of several weeks. The action that genuinely has value is a quote request from a qualified prospect. But your account also has a newsletter sign-up, a PDF download and a click on your phone number set as primary conversions. To the algorithm, those are all equally valuable goals.

So what happens? Smart Bidding optimises towards the most easily achievable volume. Newsletter sign-ups and downloads happen more often and faster than a carefully considered quote request. So the system learns: “this is where the conversion volume is”, and steers your budget towards traffic that downloads but does not buy. Meanwhile your reporting shows a lovely, rising conversion curve. Everything looks like it is working. Only your sales team notices that the leads are not coming in.

That is the treacherous thing about this setting. A wrong bid you fix in a day. A wrong goal lets you accelerate in the wrong direction for weeks, while the dashboard turns green. It is exactly the kind of vanity metric we want to get rid of in paid campaigns: not steering on the number of conversions, but on the conversions that build pipeline.

The role of Smart Bidding

Automated bidding is only as smart as the signal you feed it. The algorithm has no idea what a quote request is worth compared to a download, unless you tell it. You tell it through two levers: which actions are primary, and what conversion value you attach to them.

The first lever is the primary/secondary choice we are covering here. The second, and even more powerful one, is passing on conversion values. If a qualified lead request gets a higher value than a download, you can even bid with Target ROAS and let the system understand that not every conversion is equal. Anyone who ties those values to what actually happens after the click, a quote that becomes a deal, gives the algorithm the sharpest signal there is. That is the essence of offline conversion measurement: feeding the outcome from your CRM back to the campaign that brought the lead.

But the basics stand: only set your real value action to primary. Only once that is right does conversion value optimisation make sense.

How to set it up correctly

Follow this logic when you structure your account:

1. Identify your real value action. Ask yourself which action represents pipeline or revenue. For most B2B companies that is a quote request or a completed contact form from a qualified prospect, not every micro-action on the site.

2. Set only that action (or those actions) to primary. Keep it narrow. One or two primary actions that carry genuine value give the algorithm a clear goal. Ten mixed actions dilute the signal.

3. Set the rest to secondary. Microconversions such as downloads, video views, scroll depth and newsletter sign-ups are valuable observation data. Let them be measured, but do not let them bid. They tell you something about behaviour in the funnel, and that is exactly where they belong.

4. Assign actions deliberately per campaign. Since the introduction of conversion goals at campaign level, you can choose per campaign which actions count. A lead gen campaign should bid on requests, a brand campaign perhaps on something else. Do not let campaigns automatically inherit all account actions without thinking it through.

5. Check this before you optimise anything else. Fine-tuning keywords, bids and copy makes little sense if the foundation, your goal, is skewed. This is the first place to look, not the last.

A well-structured account starts with the right conversion logic. A google ads specialist checks this setting before touching a single bid, precisely because everything afterwards builds on it.

Common mistakes to avoid

A few pitfalls keep coming back. Setting everything to primary “just to be safe” is the most common one: it feels safe, but it dilutes your signal into noise. Double counting happens when the same action is measured through multiple conversions, for example a thank you page and a button click that represent the same event. Leaving outdated actions in place is a third one: a conversion action for a form that no longer exists sometimes keeps counting for years.

A fourth, more subtle mistake is setting microconversions to primary because there is too little volume. If your real value action only happens a few times a week, the temptation is strong to add downloads or sign-ups so the algorithm gets “enough data”. That does not solve the volume problem, it moves it. You get more conversions in your report, but fewer of the conversions that move your business forward. A better solution when volume is low is to bid on an action higher in the funnel that does correlate with your value action, or to switch to a bidding strategy that copes with less data, rather than diluting your goal.

This setting is closely tied to your account structure and your quality signals. If you want to dig deeper into how the auction and your position come about, also read Ad Rank vs quality score and how a well-considered account structure influences your quality score. Together they form the foundation that smart bidding rests on.

How often should you review this?

Conversion settings are not a one-off setup. Your website changes, your forms shift, your offer evolves, and with every change a conversion action can become outdated or start double counting. So schedule a fixed review moment, for example at every quarterly review of your account. Then go through your conversion actions one by one: does this action still measure what it is supposed to measure, is it at the right level (primary or secondary), and does it still match what your sales team considers a real lead?

That last question is the most important one. The alignment between what you count as a conversion in Google Ads and what your sales team sees as a qualified opportunity is where most accounts drift apart. Keep that conversation alive and your conversion setting stays an honest compass instead of a dashboard that reassures you while your budget heads the wrong way.

Why this matters for your growth

Paid search is the fast acquisition layer of your growth engine: it buys visibility where you need it today. But speed without the right direction burns budget. The primary/secondary setting is the compass that determines whether that speed takes you to pipeline or to empty conversion numbers. It is not an advanced tactic, it is hygiene. And it is exactly the kind of detail that makes the difference between an account that buys clicks and an account that feeds deals.

Not sure whether your conversion actions are classified correctly, or has your campaign perhaps been bidding towards the wrong goal for weeks? Get in touch with us and we will look at it together.