Tracking and UTMs
WhatsApp conversions in Google Ads: count chats, not taps
Google Ads attribution
See which of your Google Ads produce customers.
Google’s tag reports conversions to Smart Bidding. Lead Source hands you the lead itself: a name, the click ID and the keyword they clicked.
1
User clicks a Google ad
Google passes UTMs, the
gclid, and click ID to your landing page.2
User browses, submits a form
Lead Source captures every page they visit and the form data they submit, server-side, surviving cookie loss.
3
Real attribution in your CRM
Source, campaign, ad group, keyword, landing page, journey, and form data, all tied to a named lead. Not “source: google / cpc.”
The problem
Smart Bidding learns from your conversions. Your sales team gets a tally.
Conversion tracking in Google Ads exists to feed the bidding algorithm. Google learns that a form was filled after a click. Which person filled it, where they work and which keyword in which campaign sent them never makes it back to you.
Vague reporting
Your CRM calls it “google / cpc”
The conversion event goes to Google and stays there. In the CRM, a lead from your strongest search campaign looks exactly like one from your weakest: no keyword, no ad group, no creative.
Cookie loss
iOS, ITP, and ad blockers eat your data
Safari ITP, iOS privacy settings and ad blockers take out 30–50% of gclid-based attribution. Hence the conversion column in Google Ads and the lead count in your CRM, which never quite agree.
No lead context
Smart Bidding never sees the pages
Google sees the ad click and the conversion that followed. The pages in between, the time spent on each and the answers typed into the form are what make a conversion into a lead worth calling.
Match the spend to the customer, not the click
Google reports conversions. Lead Source reports which campaign produced the people who became customers.
How Lead Source fits in
One snippet, alongside Google’s conversion tag.
Leave gtag.js where it is. Google’s tag, or GA4, keeps feeding Smart Bidding, and Lead Source sits next to it collecting the lead. Neither script knows the other is there.
What Google collects improves Google’s bids. What Lead Source collects is a first-party lead record: the gclid, the keyword, any UTMs, each page visited and the submitted form fields, captured server-side and sent on to HubSpot, Salesforce or whatever CRM you run through the Lead Source Zapier app, a signed webhook or a CSV export, with the paid-search source spelled out.
Already using Google’s Enhanced Conversions or Offline Conversion Import? Lead Source captures the gclid and form data at submission, ready to feed back into Google for better bid optimisation. Talk to us about a clean Enhanced Conversions setup.
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=AW-XXXXXX"></script>
<!-- Lead Source attribution -->
<script src="https://app.leadsource.co/ft.js"
data-site="your-site-id"></script>
// both run together.
// Google gets conversion signals.
// You get named leads, gclid, and keyword.
What you get
The data Google’s tag can’t give you.
A search click, turned into a name
Google Ads logs one conversion against the “CRM software” keyword. Lead Source logs Daniel from Acme, who clicked that ad, read three pricing pages and sent the demo form.
Keyword, ad group, campaign, every lead
Match type included. Keyword, ad group, campaign and creative are read from the landing URL and gclid on arrival, then stay attached all the way to the form, with no cookie holding them in the meantime.
Page journey before submission
From the ad’s landing page to the form, every page is listed in order. Sales sees what the searcher compared before anyone picks up the phone.
Server-side, no cookies
Nothing is stored in the browser. The source is recorded on our server at submission, so Safari’s ITP, an ad blocker or a cleared cookie jar has nothing to remove.
Works the same as Meta or ChatGPT
One snippet, every ad platform. Google today, Meta and ChatGPT Ads the same way. You don’t need a platform-specific integration each time.
Paid-search leads, straight into your CRM
HubSpot, Salesforce, Close, Keap and Eloqua each get the lead with its keyword and campaign filled in. Running without a CRM is fine too: the lead sits in Lead Source.
Common questions
Common questions, answered.
Does Lead Source replace the Google tag or GA4?
No. Each of the three has its own job. Google's tag feeds conversions to Smart Bidding so your bids improve. GA4 reports traffic and behaviour across all your visitors. Lead Source records each lead by name, with its source, keyword, company and journey, and writes it into your CRM. Keep all three.
What about Google's Enhanced Conversions or Offline Conversion Import?
Both are ways to feed first-party data back to Google to recover the conversions cookie loss takes away. Enhanced Conversions uses hashed email/phone from your forms. Offline Conversion Import uses the gclid to credit closed deals back to clicks. Lead Source captures both at form submission, ready to feed Google. Get in touch if you want help setting this up.
How does Lead Source see which keyword produced a lead?
From the gclid. Google Ads adds that click identifier to the landing-page URL, with auto-tagging handling it for you, alongside any UTMs you set. Lead Source grabs the gclid on arrival, holds it server-side while the visitor browses, and attaches it to the lead when they submit. The keyword, ad group and campaign behind that gclid can then be looked up in Google Ads or through the Search Ads 360 API.
Can Lead Source track WhatsApp chats from Google Ads?
Yes, with Lead Source for WhatsApp, now in closed beta. When someone messages you on WhatsApp after a Google Ads click, the chat becomes a lead carrying that click's gclid, campaign and keyword. A tap alone never counts, so the conversion you import into Google Ads is a real conversation.
Will this work if I haven't set up Google's tag yet?
Yes. Neither Google's tag nor GA4 is required. Auto-tagging is on by default in Google Ads, so every click already carries a gclid, and the gclid is what Lead Source needs. Add Google's tag when you want Smart Bidding, and the two carry on side by side.
What about GDPR and the no-cookies thing?
No cookies and no client-side storage come from Lead Source. It captures attribution server-side at the moment a form is submitted, and you, as the website owner, stay the data controller. Under ePrivacy and PECR, that means Lead Source needs no place in your cookie banner. Google's tag does set client-side identifiers, so it still needs to sit inside your cookie consent flow.
See exactly which Google Ads produce customers.
One snippet next to gtag.js, and every paid-search lead arrives with its keyword. Free to start.
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