Google quietly announced on Google+ that they will be "simplifying" some of the AdWords reporting by dropping four search funnels columns in early April.
Google said advertisers were confused between the difference between "Assist Clicks" and "Click-Assisted Conversions," so they decided to drop them. Google is dropping the for following columns:
- Assist Clicks
- Assist Impressions
- Assist Clicks / Last Clicks
- Assist Impressions / Last Clicks
- In the Campaigns tab, where we'll remove 4 of the 10 Search Funnels columns.
- In the AdWords API, where we'll remove the same metrics as in the Campaigns tab.
- In Search Funnels, where we'll remove the Assist Clicks and Impressions report.
Google said:
If you’re using any of these columns, we recommend that you switch to the Click-Assisted Conversions columns (instead of Assist Clicks). From an optimization perspective, the Click-Assisted Conversions columns are more relevant: it's more useful to know how many conversions were assisted by a particular keyword, rather than to know how often a particular keyword appeared on any conversion path.
Here is a picture they shared:
Forum discussion at Google+.