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Conversion tracking, audited and repaired
Google Ads and GA4 conversion tracking, set up or fixed, so the bidding optimises towards the action that grows your business.
When the numbers don't add up
Ad conversion data can disagree with what's actually happening in the business in three ways, and each has its own causes.
Too many conversions
Google Ads reports 47 conversions and your own records show nine. The account is counting things nobody decided should count, or counting real ones more than once: a page view, a button click, a confirmation page reloaded, the same action from two tags. The bidding then learns to find more of it.
Too few conversions
Your records show enquiries, orders or bookings the account never sees. Calls, sales that close offline, bookings or payments finished on another website, and visitors who refused cookies with nothing to model them back can all go missing. One tell is a drop on a date the business didn't change, such as the day a cookie banner or a new website went live.
Right count, wrong value
The number of conversions matches your records, but not what they were worth: revenue in Google Ads that doesn't match what the shop took, or leads that never become customers counted the same as those that do. The bidding then chases volume rather than value.
A gap between Google Ads and GA4 isn't a fault on its own. Google Ads dates a conversion to the ad click and GA4 to the moment it happened, and the two credit conversions differently, so they rarely agree exactly. The comparison that matters is either of them against your own records.
Haven't advertised yet? Conversion tracking setup is part of the account build, tested end-to-end before a penny is spent.
A tracking problem, or a performance one? They need different answers, and thirty minutes on a free call is usually enough to tell which you have.
Talk through your numbersWhat happens first
Most accounts I pick up already have conversion tracking in place. What they often lack is confidence from anyone in the business that they can be trusted, and more often than not, the sceptics are right. So the work starts by finding out what the account is really counting.
Repairing what somebody else configured is forensic work: undocumented tags, duplicate conversions, changes nobody wrote down. The bidding has been learning from all of it, so nothing is removed until I know what it does.
Thinking about a PPC audit as well? If the tracking is wrong, fixing it comes first. Performance may improve once it's fixed, and a PPC audit may not be needed at all. How the two differ is on the audit page.
The tracking audit, in six checks
- Your records against the report. Real enquiries, orders or bookings from your own records, and what they were worth, set beside what Google Ads and GA4 recorded for the same weeks
- Every route a conversion takes. Forms, calls, checkouts, booking or payment pages on other websites, sales that close offline, and whether each one reaches the report
- Every conversion action. What's primary, how it counts, where it comes from, and whether two describe the same thing
- Every tag in the container. What it fires on, what it sends, and whether anything fires twice
- Consent. What's set before a visitor chooses, and what reaches Google after a refusal
- A test conversion. Sent through your site and followed into every report it should reach
What it finds counted too often, missed or valued wrongly comes back as a list of what needs fixing or adding. Each item is one of the jobs below.
What gets fixed or added
The tracking audit checks your account against this list, and the repair fills the gaps. Every account needs the first seven. The other five depend on how your business works, so a shop that doesn't take orders by phone won't need call tracking.
A typical conversion, by how you sell
| If you | A typical conversion is |
|---|---|
| Take enquiries | A form sent, or a call that lasted |
| Sell online | An order, with its value |
| Take bookings | A confirmed booking |
| Sell subscriptions | A sign-up or trial, then the paying subscriber it becomes |
These are the usual choices, not rules. Not every account optimises towards the expected conversion, and some get great results from one that isn't. A business can also be more than one of these, such as a shop that takes phone orders, and each gets its own conversion.
In every account
What counts
Agreed with you before any tag is changed. The actions that grow the business are set as primary, which is what the bidding optimises towards. Softer signals, such as page views, scrolls, basket adds and newsletter sign-ups, are usually kept as secondary: still recorded, not steering the bidding. Where one of them is the better thing for your account to optimise towards, that's a decision we make on purpose.
Google Tag Manager
One container, in your name, holding every tag. Each tag and trigger is named for what it does, so the next person to open it can read it.
Google Ads conversion actions
Each conversion counted once, from one source, with the count setting that fits it: One for a lead, where three submissions from one person are one lead, and Every for a sale, where three orders are three sales.
GA4
Key events that match the conversion actions, and the property linked to Google Ads. One of the two is chosen as the source the bidding learns from, so the same conversion isn't imported a second time.
Enhanced conversions
The details a customer has just given you, such as the email address on an enquiry form or at checkout, hashed and sent with the conversion for visitors who have consented. It recovers matches that browsers would otherwise lose.
A test, end to end
A test conversion, an enquiry or an order, sent through your own site and followed all the way to the report. It should arrive once.
A written record
What was found, what changed and what each tag does, so the setup survives the next handover. We go through it together on a call.
Added where your business needs it
- If you sell online
Values and order numbers
Each sale is sent with what it was worth and its order number. The value lets the bidding aim at revenue rather than a count of orders. The order number stops a reloaded confirmation page counting the same sale again. Whether the value includes VAT and delivery is agreed with you. GA4 also gets the basket and checkout steps, so you can see where orders are lost.
- If the sale closes after the click
Offline conversion import
A lead that becomes a customer, a quote that's accepted, a free trial that becomes a paying subscriber. Fed back from your CRM or billing system, so the bidding optimises towards customers rather than form fills and sign-ups.
- If customers phone you
Phone calls
Counted as conversions with a minimum duration. A tap on a phone number records the tap, not the call. Proper inbound call tracking software, such as CallRail, is an additional cost on top of my fee.
- If you book or take payment on another site
Booking and payment systems
The visit is followed from your site into the booking or payment system and back, so the conversion is credited to the ad click that started it. How far that goes depends on what the other system lets you install, which is checked before the work is quoted.
- If you advertise beyond Google
The other platforms
Microsoft's UET tag for Microsoft Advertising and the OpenAI pixel with its Conversions API for ChatGPT Ads, each tied to the same consent choices as Google's tags. Each counts the same conversions as Google Ads, so the platforms can be compared.
A repaired account reports different numbers.
If one enquiry was being counted twice, an order was counted again each time its confirmation page was reloaded, or page views were counted as leads, the corrected figure is lower. Cost per conversion goes up and reported return comes down. Where calls or offline sales were going missing, it moves the other way. Either way, the business hasn't changed. The report now reflects what is actually happening, and the metrics are accurate.
In the UK, consent comes first
Under UK law, a tag that stores or reads anything on a visitor's device for advertising needs their consent first, and measuring what the ads produced counts as advertising.
Consent Mode v2 is how Google's tags are told what each visitor agreed to. Sending those signals is Google's requirement rather than the law's. Its EU user consent policy covers visitors in the UK as well as the EEA and Switzerland, and lets Google restrict remarketing, ad personalisation and conversion measurement for an account that doesn't comply.
What changed in UK law and at Google this year is in Consent Mode v2 for UK advertisers.
What gets wired in
- A cookie banner built, or a review of the one you already have
- Consent categories that match what your tags actually do
- Advertising and analytics consent set to denied before any tag can run, so neither kind of cookie is set until a visitor has said yes
- Consent Mode v2 wired into Tag Manager, in advanced or basic mode
- A way for visitors to change their mind later, and a record of what they chose
Advanced or basic is your decision
| Basic | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|
| Before a visitor chooses | Google's tags don't load | Google's tags load, with cookies off |
| If they refuse | Nothing is sent to Google | Cookieless pings are sent |
| Modelling of lost conversions | From a general model | From your own account's data |
Modelling in Google Ads needs 700 ad clicks over seven days, per country and domain. The ICO's guidance doesn't name Consent Mode. Its test is whether a script stores or reads anything on the device, cookie or not, so I'll set out both modes and the choice is yours. This site runs advanced mode: view source on this page and the defaults sit directly above the Tag Manager snippet, with the reasoning in the comments.
What I need access to
The tracking audit only looks, but the repair changes things, so the work needs edit access to the places the tags live.
Everything stays in your name. The ad account, the Analytics property and the Tag Manager container are yours, with me added as a user. If one of them sits in an agency's or a web designer's name, moving it into yours is the first job.
Three places, at the level the work needs
- Google Ads: Standard
- Google Analytics: Editor
- Tag Manager: Publish
One step needs more: linking Google Analytics to Google Ads takes Admin access on the Google Ads side, and only while the link is made. If you'd rather keep that level to yourself, you can make the link while I walk you through it.
Then whatever the conversions pass through
Your website or shop platform, where a form or a checkout has to be read. Your booking system, if bookings are taken on it. Your CRM or billing system, where a lead or a trial becomes a customer. Your call handling, if the phone is where enquiries arrive.
If your site has no Tag Manager yet, its snippet has to be added once by whoever maintains the site. After that most tags live in the container. A hosted shop platform, such as Shopify, keeps some of its tracking in its own settings, and the work follows it there.
What it costs
The tracking audit and the repair are usually quoted together, as one fixed fee agreed before any work starts.
It's quoted after the intro call and sized to the job: one enquiry form on one site is a smaller job than a shop with a checkout, a CRM and phone calls to connect. If you'd rather see the tracking audit's findings before deciding on the repair, it's quoted on its own and the repair is priced from what it finds.
It's quoted separately from Google Ads management, so you're not paying a monthly fee for work that happens once. The consent work can be quoted with it or on its own. In a new account build, the tracking is included. Call tracking software, where you need it, is a separate cost.
Tracking audit first
Its own fixed fee, with the repair quoted from what it finds.
Audit and repair
One price for both, agreed up front. No hourly billing, and no scope creep once it's agreed.
Want a number for your tracking? It's quoted after the call, before any work starts.
Get a quote for your trackingCommon questions
Is it included in a new account?
Yes. When I build an account from scratch, conversion tracking is part of the build and is tested before a penny is spent. It's a separate fixed fee where the account already exists, because working out what somebody else configured is a different job.
No tracking at all?
Then this is still the place to start. The tracking audit is short when there's little to check, and the work is the list of jobs on this page: what counts agreed first, then the tags built and tested. If you haven't advertised yet, tracking comes with the account build instead.
Just the tracking audit?
Yes. The tracking audit and the repair are usually quoted together as one fixed fee, but the tracking audit can be quoted on its own, with the repair priced from what it finds.
Cheaper after a PPC audit?
No. The tracking audit and the repair are fixed fees either way. The PPC audit gives a verdict on whether the numbers can be trusted and names the obvious faults; it doesn't do the tag-by-tag work the tracking audit does.
Will my website need changing?
Usually once. If your site has no Google Tag Manager, its snippet has to be added by whoever maintains the site. After that most tags are managed in Tag Manager. A shop needs its platform to pass each order's value and order number to the tags, which is a setting on some platforms and a developer's job on others.
Do you track revenue too?
Yes. For a shop, each order is sent with its value and order number, so Google Ads reports revenue and return on ad spend as well as a count of sales, and the bidding can aim at return. Whether the value includes VAT and delivery is agreed with you first, because it changes what the return figure means.
Who owns the setup?
You do. The Tag Manager container, the Analytics property and the ad accounts are in your name, with me added as a user. If you stop working with me, you remove my access and everything stays where it is.
Do I need a certified consent platform?
Not to run Google Ads on your own website. Google requires a certified consent platform of publishers who earn from its ads through AdSense, Ad Manager or AdMob, not of advertisers. An advertiser's banner has to do five things: get consent before advertising cookies are set, name who receives the data, keep a record of the consent, let visitors withdraw it, and pass the answer to Google through Consent Mode v2. Any tool that does all five will do, including a free one.
Other ad platforms too?
Yes. Microsoft Advertising has its own tag, UET, and its conversion tracking doesn't come across when Google campaigns are imported. ChatGPT Ads has the OpenAI pixel and a Conversions API. Each is set up to count the same outcomes as Google Ads, so the platforms can be compared.
Not sure the tracking is the problem?
Thirty minutes, free. What the report says, what actually happened in the business, and whether the gap between them is a tracking problem or a performance one.