Google Ads conversions not recording

When Google Ads stops counting conversions, nothing on the site looks wrong. Before you change a tag, read what Google already tells you about the conversion action, then test it, then check the three things that break the chain between a click and a recorded conversion. Each step below comes from Google's own help and developer documentation.

Read the status before the tag

Every conversion action carries one of five tracking statuses. Active means everything works as intended. Needs attention means there are items to fix, but conversions are still recording. Misconfigured means they have stopped recording entirely, from a setup error or a broken tag. Awaiting conversions means none in the last 7 days, which Google says usually comes from an action created under 48 hours ago, paused campaigns, or too little traffic. Removed means the action was deleted or archived.

So Awaiting conversions on a new or paused account is not a fault, and Misconfigured is the one that means something broke.

Test the tag with Tag Assistant

Tag Assistant opens from the conversion action in Google Ads. Connect it to your site, trigger the conversion yourself by submitting the form or finishing the checkout, then close it and refresh the conversions page to see the new status. When it fails, Google points to four causes: the Google tag missing from some pages, a conversion linker or conversion tag misconfigured in Google Tag Manager, a move to a new domain or thank-you page the tag did not follow, and a campaign too new to have gathered data.

Three things that break the chain

The first is the click ID. With auto-tagging on, Google adds a parameter called GCLID to the address a person lands on, and that is what ties a later conversion back to the ad. Google names two ways it gets lost: a site that rejects unfamiliar URL parameters, and a redirect that drops the parameter before the final page.

The second is consent. In the basic form of Google's consent mode, Google tags do not load until the visitor answers the consent banner, and nothing is sent before that answer. A visitor who declines, or never answers, sends no conversion, which is the design working.

The third is the site's Content Security Policy. Google's guide to tags under a CSP explains that the policy must allow the tag code to run; a policy that does not list Google's hosts stops the tag in the browser.

Count each conversion once

The opposite fault is a count that runs high. A visitor who reloads a thank-you page can fire the tag twice. Google drops the second one when both carry the same transaction ID, a value unique to each order or sign-up, up to 64 characters, with nothing in it that identifies the person.

Enhanced conversions work alongside the tag. The site hashes first-party data such as an email address with SHA256 before it reaches Google, which improves how accurately conversions are measured. Google offers it for web conversions and for leads that close later, off the site.

To check a page from outside, the FlowPilots free scan reads one public page the way a browser does: which analytics and ad tags it is set up to load, and whether its own headers let them run. It needs no account and nothing installed on the site, and what it cannot observe is named rather than guessed.

All posts