Earlier this month we reported that Google AdWords was planning to change the way conversions are counted. Now it’s official.

Google AdWords has officially announced a new way for advertisers to track and measure conversions with their new flexible conversion counting. The goal is to help advertisers track the types of conversions that work best for their business model.

The change to the “many per clicks” conversions means that an advertiser can track different conversion types on the same click.

For example, AdWords uses the example of the Berkeley Tees company, where they want to track both leads, which they determined by those who download catalog, as well as those that actually buy a T-shirt:

It can then also effectively track when the same customer to click on an ad does the same conversion action multiple times – such as downloading the catalog three times, and will still only counted as a single unique conversion for that download. But if another customer clicks an ad once, and then makes two purchases in a week, it counts that as being two sales conversions, since two sales are made.

In your AdWords account, there’s the option to select which conversion that metric you would like to use, either converted clicks or conversions.

There are two new columns in the flexible conversion counting the replace the current conversions (one-per-click) and conversions (many-per-click) in the AdWords account.

“Converted clicks record clicks that deliver value to your business, or in other words, only clicks that drive conversions,” said Vishal Goenka, AdWords Product Manager. “The new conversions column gives you even greater visibility. It allows you to see the relative value of each converted click. This column will report all your conversions, whether you want to count all instances of the conversion or just unique conversions. Now you can focus on the value of each conversion delivered to your business.”