How to set up Google Ads conversion tracking and know it works.

Most Google Ads accounts have conversion tracking. Far fewer have conversion tracking that anyone has checked. The accounts I looked at over the years usually had the same quiet faults: a tag firing on the wrong page, two tracking paths counting the same form, or a goal nobody remembered creating that was steering the bidding. The numbers looked fine because they were numbers. Whether they were right was a separate question that nobody asked.

This guide sets up Google Ads conversion tracking from scratch, in the order that avoids those faults. If you want the bigger picture of what conversion tracking is for and where it stops, the conversion tracking software page covers it. Here we stay in the account and get the tag working.

Why most setups are quietly wrong

A conversion action is cheap to create and easy to duplicate. Nobody is warned when two of them count the same form submission. Nobody is warned when a goal meant for reporting is also set to drive bidding. The account keeps spending and the report keeps filling in.

The faults come from three places. The first is the trigger: the tag fires when a page loads or a button is clicked, not when the submission actually succeeded. The second is the path: the same event reaches Google Ads through the Google tag and through an imported GA4 key event, and both are marked primary. The third is neglect: the setup was correct once, the website changed, and nobody looked at the status column again.

Every section below closes one of those gaps.

Create the conversion action

In Google Ads, go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, and select + Create conversion action. The menu labels move around between interface updates, so if yours differs, look for Goals first and the conversion summary inside it.

Choose where the conversion happens. For a lead form on your site, that is Website. Google then asks for your domain and offers to scan it for tags, or lets you set the action up manually. Either works. Scanning tells you what Google can already see on the site, which is useful when someone else installed the tag years ago.

Then fill in the settings that matter:

• Goal and action name. Name it for the business event, such as "Quote request form", not for the page. Pages get renamed. Events stay.
• Conversion value. Leave it unset unless you have a figure you trust. A made-up value teaches the bidding to chase the made-up number.
• Count. Google's own guidance is to count "One" for leads, because a single person submitting a form twice is still one lead, and "Every" for sales, where each purchase is real revenue.
• Primary or secondary. Only primary actions are used for bidding. A micro-step like a button click belongs on secondary so it is reported without steering spend.

Save the action and Google gives you the tag details. Do not install anything yet. First decide how the event will reach Google.

Tag, Tag Manager or GA4 import: pick one

There are three ways to feed a conversion action, and the rule is one path per action.

The Google tag

You paste an event snippet on the page that follows a successful submission. It is the most direct route and the easiest to reason about. The cost is a code change every time the page changes.

Google Tag Manager

You create a Google Ads conversion tag in your container and fire it from a trigger, usually a form success event or a thank-you page view. This suits teams that already run Tag Manager and want changes without a developer.

A GA4 import

You mark an event as a key event in GA4, link the properties, and import the key event into Google Ads, where it becomes a conversion. This avoids a second tag, and it ties your Ads numbers to GA4 logic. Imports can lag, and the event rules are GA4's, not Google Ads'.

Pick the one your team will maintain. The right answer is rarely the cleverest. A tag that two people understand beats an import that one person set up and left. If your GA4 side is not set up yet, GA4 conversion tracking explains how key events are marked and why the numbers you import will not match a native tag.

Whichever path you choose, do not also add a second one for the same event. A GA4 import plus a native Google Ads action for the same form, both set to primary, double counts. Your cost per conversion halves on paper and your bidding learns from phantom leads.

Turn on enhanced conversions

Enhanced conversions improve measurement when the browser loses the click trail. You turn them on inside the conversion action, in the same settings screen you just used. Google then reads the customer data your form already collects, usually an email address or phone number, hashes it with SHA-256, and uses the hash to match the conversion to a signed-in Google user.

Two practical points. The data is hashed before it leaves the browser, so Google receives the hash, not the email address. And the field on your form needs to be recognisable: a clearly labelled email input is picked up far more reliably than a custom widget. If you collect nothing identifying on the form, there is nothing for enhanced conversions to use.

Enhanced conversions cover leads captured on your site. They do not replace sending later outcomes, such as a phone enquiry that closes in your CRM. That is a separate upload with its own rules, covered in offline conversion tracking.

Set up Consent Mode v2

If you advertise to people in the European Economic Area or the UK, Consent Mode v2 has been mandatory since 6 March 2024. It tells Google's tags what the visitor agreed to, and the tags adjust what they collect.

There are two implementations, and they behave differently:

• Basic. Google tags do not load until the visitor consents. If they decline, nothing is sent, and that visit produces no conversion data.
• Advanced. Google tags load straight away. When consent is denied they send cookieless pings instead of full data, and Google uses those signals in its conversion modelling.

Advanced gives Google more to model from. Basic is the stricter reading of consent. Which one fits is a legal and policy decision, not a marketing one, so make it with whoever owns your privacy position. What you cannot do is leave it unconfigured and assume the account works as it did before.

You will see published claims about how much modelling recovers. None of them come from Google with a number attached that holds across accounts, so plan on the modelled figure being a bonus, not a budget line.

Test it before you trust it

Open Tag Assistant in your browser, enter your site, and complete a real test submission. You are checking two things: that the Google Ads tag fires once, and that it fires after the submission succeeds, not before.

Then go back to Goals, Summary and read the status column. It tells you where each action stands:

• Active: Google has seen recent conversions and the action is working.
• Needs attention: something is wrong with the tag or the data it sends.
• Misconfigured: the tag is not reporting correctly.
• Awaiting conversions: the setup looks fine but no conversion has arrived yet.
• Removed: the action no longer counts.

Awaiting conversions right after setup is normal. Awaiting conversions three weeks later, on a page that has had traffic, is a fault. Check the status again after a week and after every site change.

Five common mistakes

1. Two paths, both primary. A GA4 import and a native action for the same event. Pick one and set the other aside.
2. Firing on the wrong moment. A tag on the form button counts attempts, including the ones that fail validation. Fire on success.
3. A page anyone can reload. A thank-you page that counts every load counts refreshes and bookmarks. Fire on the submission event, or count "One" per click.
4. Every step marked primary. A brochure download and a quote request should not steer bids equally. Keep only the outcomes you would pay for as primary.
5. Consent left unconfigured. In the EEA and UK, tags behave differently without Consent Mode v2, and your totals shift without any error message.

Fixing these five covers most of the damage. If your counts still disagree with another tool afterwards, the cause is usually that the two tools count by different rules, not that one is broken.

A conversion is not a lead

Once the tag is working, Google Ads knows that a conversion happened. It does not know who it was, and it cannot tell you whether the person turned into a customer. That is a different question from the one conversion tracking answers.

Lead Source covers that second question. It records the source channel, the campaign, the landing page and the full page journey behind each form submission, with first touch and last touch both recorded, and names the person when the form captures a name. You keep your Google Ads conversion tracking exactly as set up above and gain the record of who was behind it. The conversion tracking page shows how the two fit together, and Google Ads attribution shows what a paid click turns into on the lead record.

If you are new to the vocabulary, what conversion tracking is defines the terms in plain English.