Last night, your humble author watched an episode of The X-Files in which a sick boy got a new liver.  The twist was this: the boy got a new liver after a man who built Rube Goldberg machines survived four attempts on his life and won the lottery.  And a new set of reports known as AdWords Search Funnels acknowledges the same principle of cause and effect.

Search Funnels (which is currently in beta) should help advertisers see any sort of complicated processes that are at work.  Essentially, if two or more clicks over the course of as many as 30 days contribute to a sale, companies can now more easily recognize the sequence of events.

A post on the Inside AdWords blog explained, "AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion.  In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length."

The following video contains more information if you’re interested, although it’s not nearly as entertaining as that season seven episode of The X-Files.