Google Ads Conversion Tracking: Setup and Fixes

Olamide Sule, founder of Dolphin Analytics: a digital analytics expert based in London delivering solutions for agency and in-house clients.

This is a setup and repair guide for Google Ads conversion tracking, written for PPC marketers and agencies. It covers the three moving parts (the Google tag, a conversion action, and enhanced conversions), the two routes to install them (the direct Google tag or Google Tag Manager), and the faults that quietly corrupt the count once tracking is live. We set this up and fix it for agencies and in-house teams most weeks, so the focus is what breaks in real accounts, not just the happy path.

How does Google Ads conversion tracking actually work?

Google Ads conversion tracking records an action (a purchase, a lead, a phone call) and attributes it back to the ad click that drove it. It relies on three parts working together: the Google tag installed site-wide, a conversion action defined in Google Ads, and the GCLID (Google Click Identifier) that ties the click to the action. Miss any one and the conversion either never records or attaches to the wrong campaign.

Here is the sequence. Someone clicks your ad, and Google appends a GCLID to the landing-page URL, which the Google tag stores as a first-party cookie. When that visitor later converts, the tag reads the GCLID back and sends the conversion event to Google Ads, which matches it to the originating click and campaign. Enhanced conversions add a fourth layer on top for the clicks that cookies can’t hold onto.

How do you set up Google Ads conversion tracking?

Set up Google Ads conversion tracking by creating a conversion action, then firing it on the right event through either the Google tag or Google Tag Manager (GTM). The action tells Google what counts; the tag tells Google when it happened. Get the counting setting right at creation time, because it’s the single most common cause of inflated numbers later.

Native Google tag route:

1. In Google Ads, open Goals, then Conversions, then New conversion action, and choose Website.
2. Define the action: pick a category (purchase, lead, sign-up), set a value (fixed, or dynamic from the page for e-commerce), and choose the counting setting. Use Every for sales, where each transaction is a real conversion, and One for leads, where one person filling a form twice is still one lead.
3. Confirm the Google tag is installed across the site, or add it. Google Tag Assistant will tell you whether it’s firing.
4. Fire the conversion event where the action completes: on the confirmation page for form leads, or on the real purchase event for e-commerce, ideally with the order value and a transaction ID.
5. Verify in Google Tag Assistant and wait for the action status to move from “Unverified” to “Recording conversions”.

GTM route: install the Google tag through GTM, add a Conversion Linker tag so the GCLID is captured, then add a Google Ads Conversion Tracking tag triggered on the same event. If you track through GTM, do not also paste the conversion snippet into the page template. Running both is the classic double-count, and it is covered below.

Google publishes the current field-by-field steps in its conversion tracking setup guide; the mechanics above hold regardless of small UI changes.

What are Google Ads enhanced conversions, and do you need them?

Enhanced conversions recover conversions that cookies alone miss. When someone converts, the tag sends a hashed (SHA-256, so no raw personal data leaves the browser) version of first-party details such as their email address, which Google matches to a signed-in account and credits back to the ad click. In practice they recover conversions lost to consent limits, cross-device journeys, and Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention, where a plain cookie-based conversion would have gone unrecorded.

You turn them on in one of three ways: through the Google tag, which can auto-detect data already on the page; through GTM, where you map the user-provided data fields yourself; or through the API for a server-side setup. Google has simplified the on-page path into a single switch in the conversion settings, as Google’s own enhanced conversions documentation describes, so the setup effort is now low. You do need to accept the customer data terms first, and in the UK and EEA enhanced conversions work alongside Consent Mode v2, which passes consent signals so Google only models on the traffic you’re allowed to model on.

Do most advertisers need them? For lead generation and e-commerce, yes: match quality is where paid budgets get wasted or saved, and the downside is minimal once consent is handled properly. The one caveat is that enhanced conversions improve measurement; they do not fix a conversion action that was set up wrong in the first place.

How do you fix Google Ads conversions that double-count?

Google Ads double-counts conversions when the same action gets recorded twice, usually because two tags fire the same event or the counting setting is wrong. A lead action set to count Every conversion will log a fresh lead every time someone refreshes or revisits the thank-you page. Two tags firing (a hardcoded snippet plus a GTM tag) will report every real conversion as two.

Work through these causes in order:

1. Two measurement paths. The conversion snippet is pasted in the page template and also fired through GTM. Remove one. Keep GTM if you run it; otherwise keep the on-page tag.
2. Wrong counting setting. Change lead actions from Every to One in the conversion action settings. Keep Every only for genuine repeat purchases.
3. A re-loadable confirmation page. If the thank-you page fires the tag on every load, a browser refresh or back button re-counts. Gate the tag behind a real transaction, or pass a transaction ID.
4. Deduplication missing on sales. Send a unique order or transaction ID with each purchase conversion. Google uses it to collapse repeat fires of the same order into one.
5. Overlapping conversion actions. A GA4 import and a native tag can both count the same purchase. Audit the conversions list and set only one action per goal to appear in the “Conversions” column.

If the numbers are still off after this, the fault is usually upstream in how the event fires, not in Google Ads itself.

Why are your Google Ads conversions higher than actual sales?

Not every gap between Google Ads and your back office is a bug. View-through conversions on Display and Video count people who saw an ad but never clicked. Modelled conversions estimate what consent gaps and cookie loss hid. Add double-counting or a test conversion someone forgot to switch off, and the reported total drifts well above confirmed revenue. Reconcile against real orders before you trust the figure.

The pattern is not unique to Google. Ad platforms are built to claim credit, so their dashboards tend to report generously. We see the same overclaim on Meta, where view-through and modelled data inflate the count against confirmed Shopify sales; the mechanics are laid out in why Meta Ads over-report conversions. The fix in both cases is the same: treat the ad platform as a claim, then check it against orders in Shopify, GA4 or the CRM. Reconciling those numbers is core to how we approach tracking.

What if Google Ads isn’t recording conversions at all?

A conversion action stuck on “Unverified”, or a live campaign showing zero conversions, is a different problem from an inflated count. The usual culprits are a tag that stopped firing after a site change, auto-tagging switched off so no GCLID reaches the site, or Google Ads and GA4 not linked so an imported key event never arrives. We walk through each of those, with the checks to confirm which one it is, in Google Analytics not tracking conversions.

A quick verification checklist

Before you sign off any Google Ads conversion setup, confirm:

• The conversion action status reads “Recording conversions”, not “Unverified”.
• Auto-tagging is on, so the GCLID reaches your landing pages.
• Lead actions count One; sales actions count Every.
• Only one measurement path fires each conversion (tag or GTM, never both).
• Purchase conversions carry a value and a transaction ID for deduplication.
• Enhanced conversions are on, with the customer data terms accepted and consent handled.
• The reported total roughly reconciles with confirmed orders, allowing for attribution windows.

Get your Google Ads tracking checked

If you’re not certain your Google Ads conversions are set up right, the free data audit is built to catch exactly these faults: double-counting, wrong counting settings, inflated view-through totals, and conversions that never reach the account. It’s the first step before you scale spend on numbers you can’t yet trust. To see what’s actually firing on your site right now, start with a tracking audit, then bring the results to the audit conversation.