[adwords.google.com...]
The difference here, is that now it is smaller, text only, and can also be more effectively blended in with the particular conversion page(s) on which it appears.
AWA
To some it smacks of "Big Brother". And when the "Big Brother" is Google - well, you could just imagine some of the potential headlines:
"Big Brother Google is watching YOU!"
"Favourite search engine spys your web purchases..."
"You buy - Google sells; your secrets passed on by trusted search engine!"
And so on...
Some people are very alarmist when it comes to the idea of them being "followed' on the web. Whilst we all know the true scenario here, others can, and do, interpret this "invasion of privacy" differently, thus the idea of acknowledging the fact that cookies performing specific funtions are in place is very worthwhile. Particularly when the worry over "spy-ware" and increased levels of monitoring of public activities causes greater concern for the general populace, who, in the main, will not have the level of internet sophistication that everyone has here.
If (when) you were (are) being "tracked", in whatever way, you'd want to know, wouldn't you? It's your fundamental right to know, isn't it?
In my view Googe is just reassuring the public-at-large and quite rightly too. Just because you end up with a tiny text box on your web page won't detract from people buying - it is on the "Thank you" page after all!
There are arguments for - and arguments against; this is just IMHO.
Syzygy
Call me paranoid but I always found it extremely unsettling that some business othat than yours would get their hands on such a vital information like number of orders you get, and sometimes composition of orders like sales value, gross profit, individual items etc, and what % of those orders is their contribution - from negotiating point of view this is a disaster because if they know they contribute a lot to your bottom line then you will pretty much have to agree to anything they say.
I see great benefits to Google itself to get this sort of information, however I see no reason why any business would want to in light of so many tracking facilities available from other independent parties who will never be able to exert any degree of control over your business because you can change them in an eye blink, but that would be a bit too hard to do with Google.
Praemonitus - praemunitus (Forewarned - forearmed) - those who use Google's conversion tracking should stop for a minute and consider long term consequences of their actions.
As I understand it, as a result you can match the bg color of the page to that of the font text thus making it hidden from the user.
What you describe would actually be counter to the terms and conditions, kmander.
Rather than allowing one to make the text invisible, the idea is to let you make the back ground of the text box match the background of your site, so that only the text remains. And remain it must. ;)
Here is some info currently linked-to from the Campaign Summary page of all accounts:
[adwords.google.com...]
AWA
[webmasterworld.com...]
AWA
