When Smart Goals Aren’t Smart at All

In December of last year, Google rolled out Smart Goals to AdWords users. The company promoted the feature as a way for businesses to forgo the painstaking process of setting up conversion tracking by using conversion data collected from other businesses instead.

But this “easy-to-use” solution begs a big question: Would the actual data (if conversion tracking was in place) bear any resemblance to this aggregated data?

Truth is, advertisers have no way of knowing. And that seems more than a little risky.

In her latest column in Search Engine Watch, Pauline Jakober takes a closer look at the issues surrounding Smart Goals and speculates at what might lie behind this latest Google offering.

Smart Goals