Checking your conversion tracking in half an hour

Of all the things that go wrong in a Google Ads account, this is the most expensive one, and at the same time the dullest. If your conversions are not passed on correctly, Google optimises for the only thing it can see: clicks. You get exactly what you asked for, plenty of visitors who buy nothing, and the dashboard looks fine while it happens.

Every analysis you do after that is unreliable. That is why it is the first thing the free audit checks, and why this article comes first.

Recognising the symptom

You are probably dealing with this if one of these applies:

• The number of conversions is zero, or far lower than the number of enquiries in your inbox
• The conversions look suspiciously round, for instance exactly the same as last year's thank-you page visits
• Google shows a warning in the account about a tag receiving no data
• Your phone rings, but the account says nothing about calls
• Two campaigns report zero conversions while getting as many clicks as the ones that do report them

That last one is the clearest signal. Zero is almost never a real number.

The order to check it in

1. Is the conversion action on the right page. In Google Ads, go to Goals and then Conversions. Check per conversion action when a conversion was last recorded. If nothing shows up from the past week while there was traffic, the problem is the tag or the page.

2. Are you measuring the right moment. A thank-you page anyone can reach by typing the URL counts too much. A form that submits over AJAX without reloading the page counts too little. Check whether the form actually moves to a separate URL, and if not, whether an event is being passed.

3. Do phone calls count. For installers, garages and practices, most enquiries come in by phone. Without call tracking, your account misses exactly the conversions that make your revenue. This is the most common gap we find at local service businesses.

4. Is your cookie banner blocking measurement. If a visitor declines marketing cookies, the conversion may not simply be passed on. That is as it should be. What you do need to check is whether your consent setup actually lets through the permission you did receive. Otherwise you are throwing away measurements you are perfectly entitled to make.

5. Are you counting twice. A conversion action that arrives both through a tag and through an integration with your own system counts twice. Check whether the same enquiry appears under two names in the list.

6. Is the split between primary and secondary conversions right. Only conversions set as primary steer the bidding. If your quote request is set to secondary and your newsletter signup to primary, Google is optimising for newsletters.

What you need to know afterwards

If you fix the tracking, your history up to that point is not comparable with the period after it. It will look as though your results suddenly improved, while all you did was start counting what was already happening. Note the date of the fix somewhere, and do not compare across that line.

Smart bidding strategies also need time after a fix. They steer on the conversion data they know, and that has just changed. Expect a learning period before the numbers mean anything again.

What AdWarp does here

The audit checks per campaign whether conversions are coming in, and reports it when a campaign passed nothing on during the measured period. What we cannot see is whether the number that does come in is correct, because that would mean looking inside your website and your conversion action. So you get a step-by-step plan for that instead of an automatic fix. That is also how it is stated in the honesty rules: what we cannot establish, we do not fill in with a guess.