On March 25, 2026, Google quietly deprecated the include_in_conversions_metric attribute in the Google Ads API in favour of primary_for_goal on ConversionAction (Google Ads API documentation, 2026). The rename matters less than the rule it formalised: a new conversion action only auto-defaults to primary if every existing action sharing the same category and origin is already primary. The standard WooCommerce setup — Purchase as primary, AddToCart as secondary — fails that check the moment you add a Newsletter or Lead conversion. The new action is silently created as secondary, locked out of Smart Bidding, and absent from the Conversions column.

You won’t see an error. You’ll see a Lead action that never moves Smart Bidding’s behaviour, and reports that never show it converting.

Why Your New WooCommerce Conversion Action Won’t Enter Smart Bidding

The mechanics are simple once you see them. Every conversion action in Google Ads carries a category (Purchase, AddToCart, Lead, Submit Lead Form, Signup, etc.) and an origin (Website, Import, App). When you create a new action, Google evaluates the existing actions in the same category and origin:

• If every existing same-category action is already primary: the new action is created with primary_for_goal = TRUE. It enters Smart Bidding. It shows in the Conversions column.
• If even one existing same-category action is secondary: the new action is created with primary_for_goal = FALSE. It’s logged but invisible to bidding and to the Conversions column.

The default is conditional. Most account owners assume it isn’t.

Conversion tracking failure is already the dominant cause of underperforming campaigns. 38% of Google Ads accounts have broken conversion tracking as the primary reason ads fail to convert (Get-Ryze AI, 2026). Accounts with tracking errors see 47% higher Cost Per Acquisition and 32% lower conversion rates than properly tracked campaigns (RebootIQ, 2026). The primary_for_goal rule adds a new failure mode to that list — one that doesn’t even register as a tracking error, because the conversion is being recorded correctly. It just isn’t entering the bidding signal.

The WooCommerce Setup That Triggers the Silent Skip

The classic ecommerce setup looks like this:

• Purchase — primary, used for bidding
• AddToCart — secondary, observation only
• ViewContent — secondary, observation only
• Begin Checkout — secondary, observation only

That setup is correct. Purchase drives Smart Bidding; the funnel events are observation signals that help diagnose drop-off. But the moment you add a fourth or fifth action — Newsletter signup, Lead form, Book a Demo, Phone Call — Google evaluates the rule.

The rule is evaluated per category. A new Lead action checks all existing Lead-category actions. If you don’t have any Lead actions yet, the new one becomes primary (because there are no non-primary same-category actions to fail the check).

But here’s where it bites: a new action in the Submit Lead Form category checks against any existing actions in that category — and if a previous Lead Form action was set to secondary (a common pattern when stores test a goal before committing it), the new one inherits FALSE silently. The Newsletter conversion gets recorded. Smart Bidding never sees it. Three months later, the account owner notices Newsletter sign-ups happening but the Smart Bidding campaign optimising as if they aren’t.

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The 5-Minute Audit (Before You Add Any New Action)

Run this every time you’re about to add a conversion action to a Smart Bidding account:

1. Open Tools → Conversions → Goals. Every conversion action shows its status: “Primary action used for bidding optimization” or “Secondary action (observation only).”
2. List every existing action in the same category as the one you’re about to create. If you’re adding a Lead, list every existing Lead. If you’re adding a Submit Lead Form, list every Submit Lead Form.
3. Verify every same-category action is primary. If any are secondary, decide whether they should be promoted. Most ecommerce accounts deliberately keep AddToCart and ViewContent secondary — those should stay that way. But a Lead Form that’s marked secondary by accident should be flipped.
4. Promote the secondary same-category actions you actually want bidding on, or accept that the rule will fail and that your new action will need to be flipped to primary manually after creation.
5. After creating the new action, re-check the goals page and confirm the new action shows “Primary action used for bidding optimization.” If it shows secondary, click into it and toggle the primary setting.

The 5-minute audit is the difference between a Lead action that drives Smart Bidding and one that silently doesn’t.

This isn’t an isolated quirk. It’s a pattern: the platform’s behaviour changes, the change is documented in developer reference material the average account owner never reads, and the symptom shows up as a slow-onset performance drag rather than an obvious failure. The Google Ads conversion-lag problem follows the same shape — a configurable behaviour with a non-obvious default that quietly bends bidding away from the conversions you actually care about.

Why This Matters Beyond Smart Bidding

The primary_for_goal rule extends past in-account conversions. Two adjacent surfaces feed the same ConversionAction resource:

• Enhanced Conversions for Leads: Uploads first-party data — hashed email and phone — to enrich offline lead conversions. The data only enters Smart Bidding if the underlying conversion action is primary. Stores running Enhanced Conversions on a secondary action are paying the integration cost and getting none of the bidding benefit.
• Offline conversion imports: The same applies. CRM-side conversions imported via the API land in the conversion action you specify. If that action is secondary, the upload succeeds, the data is recorded, and Smart Bidding never sees it. The signal is captured and ignored at the same time.

Browser-only conversion tracking already misses an estimated 30-40% of conversions to iOS ATT and cookie deprecation (Cometly, 2026). Enhanced Conversions and offline imports are how stores claw that back. The primary_for_goal rule decides whether those signals do anything once they arrive.

How Seresa Verifies Primary Status From Outside the UI

Here’s how you actually do this on a WooCommerce store. Transmute Engine™ — Seresa’s first-party Node.js tracking server — sends Google Ads conversion events via the API with explicit category and origin metadata, so you can verify primary_for_goal status directly from the API response rather than hunting through the Google Ads UI for each action. The server-side delivery path also bypasses the browser-side tracking gap that contributes to the 30-40% conversion blind spot.

Transmute Engine is a server, not a plugin. The inPIPE plugin sits in WordPress as the courier; the engine on your subdomain handles capture, hashing, and routing to Google Ads, GA4, BigQuery, Meta CAPI, and the rest. Conversion-action status becomes an API field you can audit, not a UI checkbox you have to remember to inspect.

Key Takeaways

• Google Ads deprecated include_in_conversions_metric on March 25, 2026 in favour of primary_for_goal on ConversionAction. The rename is cosmetic. The rule is not.
• A new conversion action only auto-defaults to primary if every existing action in the same category and origin is already primary — otherwise the new action is created as secondary and locked out of Smart Bidding.
• The classic WooCommerce funnel (Purchase primary, AddToCart secondary) is fine for ecommerce signals — but adding any Lead, Submit Lead Form, or Signup action requires checking same-category status first.
• Secondary actions appear only under All conv. — they do not contribute to Smart Bidding and do not show in the Conversions column. The conversion is recorded and ignored at the same time.
• Run the 5-minute audit before every new conversion action. Same-category check first, action creation second, primary-status verification third.

Frequently Asked Questions

Run the 5-minute audit on every Google Ads account before adding any new conversion action this week. Start at seresa.io.