Michael Mattis from the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog just announced a very cool conversion tracking feature I'd love to see in a future edition of Google Analytics: conversion analytics designed to help track your "conversion assists".

What on earth is a "conversion assist"?

While a "conversion" occurs when someone completes an action of value on your website, such as a purchase, a lead submission or subscription transaction, a "conversion assist" occurs when a PPC keyword phrase has contributed to a conversion that was credited to the keyword phrase used by the searcher just prior to their conversion.

Here's an example to illustrate this Michael offers:

Let's say that a user came to your Sci-Fi collectibles site and bought a "tribble" plush toy. He or she might actually have been searching on "United Federation of Planets". The user might have viewed the ad with the keyword, "United Federation of Planets" first, then later viewed the ad with the keyword, "quadro-triticale" and then finally converted on the ad displaying the keyword, "tribble." The system records this trail of clicks, or "lead events," crediting both "United Federation of Planets" and "quadro-triticale" with an assist and "tribble" with the conversion. This way you'll know that your keywords are leading to conversions, even if the relationship is not a direct one.

Michael notes that the system will show up to 30 lead events per conversion over a 45 day period provided the user has cookies enabled.

You can get more help with the new Yahoo! conversion-only analytics option here.

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