If you use PayPal to process credit card transactions and you are using Google AdWords to push sales on these products, a recent change PayPal has made will be seriously screwing with your ability to record conversions in Google AdWords.
I’ve just spent over one hour on this and was very discouraged about the change. Here is my letter to PayPal that I am posting on my blog as well detailing the problem.
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Sent to PayPal using their online Feedback interface
PayPal has recently made a change in the order confirmation page. It used to be at the end of the transaction the buyer (if the PayPal account owner had set this up) was automatically sent to the desired thank you page on the selling website.
Now PayPal has globally, for all customers, defeated this. Instead of being automatically returned to the selling site, a new screen is shown within PayPal with an order confirmation number and an orange button that says return to merchant name’s site.
In my case (I manage many AdWords clients) this means that if and only if the client clicks the orange return to website button will a Google AdWords conversion will be recorded.
If the buyer chooses to just close that tab and surf elsewhere, no Google AdWords conversion is recorded. This is a very big problem for any client who is using PayPal and then marketing these services on Google AdWords.
As a Professional Account Google AdWords Account Manager I will not be recommending that clients use PayPal if they are promoting their items on AdWords. The recording of conversions is one of our biggest tools to understand if spending on AdWords is an investment or an expense.
I will hope that PayPal will reverse this action. You can contact me, Nancy McCord at 301-705-7303 or nancy@mccordweb.com
Please pass my comments up the chain as PayPal may not have considered this when they have made this very important change.