AdWords time of click conversion attribution

[dougmcc1]

Why does adwords report conversions at the time of click instead of the day that the conversion actually happened?

For example, if the click happened on a monday and the conversion came in on thursday, adwords reports the conversion as happening on monday which is not accurate.

The only way around this that I know of is to use google analytics instead.

But I'm still confused as to the thinking behind assigning the conversion to the wrong day. What is the benefit to reporting the conversion at the time of click rather than the day that the conversion actually happened?

Feel free to point me to any previous threads that discuss this in detail.

Thanks!

[RhinoFish]

In AdWords, the metrics are regarding clicks, not sales. So they associate the sale with the click. It would be impossible to do detailed segmentation work on your PPC if they broke the assumed connection between click (cause) and sale (effect).

For example, let's say you want to alter your bidding by day of the week... you need the data regarding the effectiveness of the clicks on each day of the week, and how many sales they drove. You don't want to have sales tracked to the day they happened, but tracked to the day the click happened.