Conversion tracking in Google Ads is the precise monitoring of desired actions taken by users after interacting with your ads. Read on to discover how to master conversion tracking and improve your return on investment (ROI).
Conversion tracking helps you see which of your ads lead to a conversion — and the journey a customer takes to achieve that action.
If you’re new to conversion tracking, it can feel a little intimidating. There’s code to install, tags to manage, and goals to optimize for. This guide to conversion tracking in Google Ads will help.
Below, we’ll explain how to set up conversion tracking for your account, look at which conversions you can monitor, and how to troubleshoot any issues — all with the expert guidance and advice from our HawkSEM team.
What is conversion tracking in Google Ads?
Conversion tracking is how advertisers track and quantify people’s actions on their websites after clicking on their Google Ads.
Let’s break this down.
A conversion is any action a user takes that you want to measure. You might think of it like a goal, such as:
- Completing a purchase
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Calling your business
- Submitting a form
- Downloading your app
For example, we have a form on our website that prospective clients can complete to request a consultation. When they hit the Let’s Go! button, that’s a conversion.
With conversion tracking, we can see:
- How many times people visit our site before requesting a consultation
- How many pages people visit on our site before requesting a consultation
- Which other marketing channels people interact with before requesting a consultation
This helps us understand our potential customers better and see which marketing channels they respond best to.
You can benchmark the conversions you receive by determining the conversion rate. You calculate this by dividing the number of conversions by the number of clicks received.
Why should you use conversion tracking?
“Conversion tracking informs Google Ads what actions, for example, leads or product purchases, are the most important for your business,” says Elliott Thrussel, SEM Manager at HawkSEM.
“As a result, you can see where your marketing dollars are going, and identify what you can do to optimize and improve your performance.”
Conversion tracking insights also help you see which aspects of your Google Ads campaign work well.
Let’s say you have a campaign with multiple ads. While you’re happy with your overall conversion rate, you want to dig deeper and see which ads are doing the heavy lifting.
Conversion tracking for Google Ads lets you see:
- Which ads lead to the most website conversions
- The keywords and website placements that generate the best results
- Which campaigns have high click-through rates but aren’t converting
In addition, the data you collect from conversion tracking in ads can impact your other marketing campaigns.
For example, you can use conversion tracking data in your remarketing campaigns, which may increase your ROI by targeting previous visitors who’ve shown interest in your products.
How to set up Google Ads conversion tracking
To use Google Ads conversion tracking, you need to add a code snippet to your website. This code snippet is called a Google Tag (previously called a “global site tag” or “gtag”).
This Google Tag acts as a “trigger” telling Google Ads that a customer has completed a conversion.
Here’s how to set it up.
- Log into your Google Ads account
- Navigate to the trophy icon (Goals) on the left-hand side of the screen
- Expand Conversions and click Summary
- Click the blue New conversion action button
- Choose which conversion you want to track: Website, App, or Phone calls. Choose Import if you want to import a Google Analytics goal, offline conversion, or import a conversion from a CRM like Salesforce
We’ll walk through the Website option since that’s the most common. You’ll use this to measure conversions, such as form submissions, newsletter sign-ups, and adds to cart.
- Enter your website domain and click Scan
- Scroll down past Create conversion actions from Web and App events to Create conversion actions manually using code
- Click on Add a conversion action manually
Goal and action optimization
Enter the goal category under goal and action optimization. This can be one of the following.
- Purchase
- Add to cart
- Begin checkout
- Subscribe
- Contact
- Submit lead form
- Book appointment
- Sign-up
- Request quote
- Get directions
- Outbound click
- Page view
- Other
Conversion name
Name your conversion – make it something memorable.
Value
Assigning a conversion value helps Google decide how important your conversion is.
Let’s say you know that every time a form submission is completed on one of your landing pages, it leads to a $1,000 job, which is higher than your average job value.
To account for this ad’s extra profit, you can assign the conversion action (completing a form on that specific landing page) the value of $1,000.
This will help you create a bidding strategy that delivers a higher ROI by bidding more on ads that lead to higher-value conversions.
You can choose Don’t use a value for this conversion action if all your conversions are equal in value.
Count
Select how often a conversion should be counted– every time or just once. Keep in mind that lead generation-related goals should generally only be counted once.
Update the rest of the settings as needed.
Click Done when you’ve completed the setup.
How to set up conversion tracking with the Google Ads tag
When your conversion action is ready, you need to add the code to your website.
You can do this yourself if you have access or ask your web developer to do it for you.
How to set up conversion tracking with Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager (GTM) lets you add functionality to your website even if you don’t have developer knowledge.
“(GTM) helps consolidate multiple conversion tracking codes into one simple tool,” says Sam Yadegar, CEO and Founder of HawkSEM. “This means you can manage your website code and Google Tags without constantly amending the backend of your website.”
If you use WordPress, the Google Site Kit plugin lets you manage GTM directly on your website.
You need the conversion ID and conversion label to set your conversion up on GTM.
You can find these after setting up your conversion action in Google Ads by clicking on Use Google Tag Manager.
How to set up conversion tracking with Google Analytics
Alternatively, you can set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics and import your conversions into Google Ads.
The benefit of this is that you can see your Google Ads conversion data alongside your direct, organic, and referral traffic stats.
Plus, if you already have Google Analytics code on your website, you don’t need to set and install additional code.
To do this, you need to set up a conversion in Google Analytics. To do this, go to Property Settings and Events. You then mark this event as a Key Event.
Once you’ve done this, follow the directions above and choose Import.
Next, choose Google Analytics 4 properties and Web and connect your Google Analytics account to Google Ads if you haven’t already.
You can then import your conversions across.
What types of conversions can you track with Google Ads?
Once you know how to set up conversions, you need to understand the various conversion tracking options that Google Ads offers.
Google Ads offers five main conversion actions for you to track:
- Website actions: Website actions are the most basic and widely used type of Google Ads conversions. These conversions include purchases, form completions, and button clicks
- Phone calls: As you may guess from the name, a phone call conversion action tracks a call to your business phone number from your Google Ad
- App installs: If you have an iOS or Android mobile app, this conversion action tracks app downloads from a Google Ad, as well as in-app actions like purchases
- Offline conversions: These conversions take place offline but can be traced back to your ad. For example, an over-the-phone sale or in-person purchase
- Local conversions: If your business has a brick-and-mortar location, you can use location conversion to track when someone completes an action related to that location after interacting with an ad. For example, getting directions on Google Maps or viewing a menu
Conversion categories in Google Ads
When setting up conversion tracking in Google Ads, you’ll need to select a conversion category for each conversion action.
This will streamline your pay-per-click (PPC) reporting by allowing you to segment and analyze your data more effectively based on the type of conversions you’re tracking.
Google Ads offers a range of conversion categories grouped into three main types:
Sale categories
These categories are crucial for ecommerce and retail-focused campaigns, as they track direct sales-related actions taken by users. Actions in this category include:
- Making a purchase
- Adding an item to a shopping cart
- Initiating a checkout process
- Subscribing to a recurring service
Lead categories
Lead categories are for service-oriented businesses and local businesses that rely on generating qualified leads. Conversions in this category include:
- Submitting a lead form
- Booking an appointment
- Signing up for an account
- Requesting a quote
- Calling your business directly from an ad
- Getting directions to a local store
Further categories
For more specialized tracking needs, Google Ads provides additional categories that allow for the customization of conversion actions based on specific business requirements. These include:
- Page views
- Engagement metrics like time spent on a site
- Downloads or other specific user interactions
Selecting the right conversion category for each conversion action enables more precise reporting, giving you clearer insights into how different aspects of your campaigns contribute to your overall marketing objectives.
How can you optimize your Google Ads conversion tracking?
Setting up and managing conversions in Google Ads will help you improve your PPC marketing strategy.
However there are some additional things you can do to take your conversion tracking in Google Ads to the next level. Here are four tips to get you started.
- Set up A/B testing
- Explore your return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Understand your attribution model
- Check your metrics
Set up A/B testing
A/B testing is one of the best ways to truly understand your audience. With A/B testing, you run two versions of an ad and give them equal splits of your traffic.
This can help you determine which combinations of ad copy, design, and targeting lead to the highest levels of customer engagement and where you should focus your ad spend.
Once you have your results, you can replicate your ads’ successful combinations and continue making new versions to refine your ads further.
Explore your return on ad spend (ROAS)
ROAS is an important metric that shows how much revenue you generate for every dollar you spend on your ads.
When conversion tracking in Google Ads, you can monitor the ROAS of each ad to see which generates the most revenue for your business.
You can also examine parameters like location, device type, and language, building separate campaigns that will maximise your profits.
Understand your attribution model
An attribution model gives varying credit to different touchpoints that lead to a conversion or sale.
It’s rare that someone will see your ad, click on it, and convert immediately. It’s more likely that a customer will click on multiple ads or view multiple marketing channels before deciding to make a purchase.
An attribution model helps you understand how your target audience interacts with your business and which ads do the most work.
While there used to be several attribution models in Google Ads, there are now only two:
- Last-click, which gives all the credit to the last touchpoint the customer clicked on
- Data-driven attribution, which uses your previous data to assign credit
Check your metrics
Google Ads offers a variety of reports where you can view and analyze your conversion data.
Campaign reports
The Campaigns tab within Google Ads contains a detailed table listing both active and inactive campaigns.
One of the essential columns in this table is Conversions. This column reflects the conversions triggered by your ads, as reported by the conversion tags in Google Tag Manager or directly via Google Ads.
Each time a conversion tag fires—indicating that a visitor clicked one of your ads and completed a desired action—the details are sent to this column.
Customizing reports for conversion values
If you’re tracking conversion values alongside conversion counts (e.g., the monetary value of a purchase), you will need to customize your report to include this data. To do this:
- Go to the Columns dropdown in your campaign report
- Select Modify Columns
- Choose Conv. Value to add this to your report setup
Once added, an additional column will appear in your campaign dashboard, showing the value that each ad or campaign brings to your business.
Common conversion tracking issues (and how to fix them)
You’re now well-versed in the importance of conversion tracking in Google Ads – but what happens when you hit a roadblock?
The first step? Ride it out. Once you’ve set up or amended your conversion tracking it might take up to 24 hours for your conversions to become “verified.”
This delay allows Google Ads to process and confirm that your website and Google Ads account are “talking” to each other.
If you’re experiencing problems after this though, it might be time to do some investigating.
- Your conversions are set up incorrectly
- Your triggers aren’t firing properly
- You’re getting different figures in Google Ads and Google Analytics
Your conversions are set up incorrectly
With everything that goes into Google Ads setup, it’s easy to hit a snag during the process.
“One of the biggest problems we often see with clients is that they set the click-through conversion window incorrectly,” says Peter Damicone, Analytics Manager at HawkSEM. “Set the window too long and you risk inaccurate conversions. Set it too short, and you could miss out on conversions entirely.”
If you think your conversions are set up wrong, the best thing to do is to go back and review all the settings one-by-one. Sometimes one small change can make a big difference.
If you have the time, Google Ads offers free Google Ads Measurement Certification that shows you how to accurately track and measure conversions.
Your triggers aren’t firing properly
If your triggers aren’t set up correctly, conversions may fire when they shouldn’t, or fire multiple times when they should only fire once.
If you encounter any issues with your conversion tracking tag, Google has a help center you can reach out to.
Alternatively if you use Google Tag Manager, Tag Assistant can verify that all your tags work correctly. It scans your website for Google tags and provides feedback on tags that aren’t firing.
You’re getting different figures in Google Ads and Google Analytics
If your conversion numbers vary slightly in Google Ads and Google Analytics, this isn’t a major cause for concern.
Both platforms report on metrics in different ways. While Google Ads shows conversion data based on ad click data, Google Analytics reports on conversion date.
Stick to reporting on one platform to ensure consistency.
The future of conversion tracking
Google Chrome will depreciate third-party cookies in 2025. This will significantly impact conversion tracking and the potential accuracy of results.
“This means advertisers will have to switch to using first-party data instead – data they have directly collected themselves,” says Chloe Derse, Lead Strategist at HawkSEM.
“A great starting point is to use enhanced conversions when you set up conversion tracking,” Derse explains. “This method collects hashed first-party data which allows Google to better match conversion data with signed-in Google accounts.”
In other words, this strategy allows for more accurate conversion tracking while keeping customer data safer because it’s hashed.
The takeaway
Conversion tracking in Google Ads shouldn’t be hard, challenging, or scary!
The trick is to be organized and focus on your admin. Understand what you want to track, make sure you set up your conversions correctly, and monitor your conversion data regularly to check for errors.
Of course, if conversion tracking still sounds like a lot to think about, we can help. Our PPC experts will plan, structure, and manage your Google Ads campaigns, helping you see which ads bring in the clicks and conversions.
Get in touch today for your free PPC consultation – you’ll be on the right track with us in your corner.
This article has been updated and was originally published in May 2023.
