Getting started · 4 min read
Why your conversion tracking is probably broken
If Google can't see which clicks became enquiries, it optimises toward the wrong thing — and every report you read is built on sand.
Conversion tracking is a small piece of code on your website that tells Google 'this visit became an enquiry'. It is the least glamorous part of advertising and the one most likely to be silently wrong.
Why it matters more than your ads
Google's bidding gets better when it knows which clicks led somewhere. Without that signal it optimises toward clicks — and clicks are easy to buy from people who will never contact you. You end up with a busy-looking account and an empty inbox.
It also makes every number you read meaningless. Cost per enquiry, return on spend, which keyword is winning: all of it is computed from conversions. If conversions aren't recording, those numbers aren't wrong at the edges — they're fiction.
The three ways it breaks
The tag was never installed. Someone created the conversion action in Google Ads, which is the easy half, and never put the code on the site. Google shows the action as 'unverified' and quietly records nothing.
The tag is on the wrong page. It needs to fire when the enquiry completes — the thank-you page — not when the form is displayed. Fire it on the form page and Google counts everyone who looked at it.
It's recording but not counted as a goal. The action exists, it fires, but it isn't marked as a primary goal — so bidding ignores it entirely. This one is invisible unless you go looking.
How to check in five minutes
Submit an enquiry on your own website, using your own form, as a real visitor would. Then open Google Ads and look at your conversion actions. Within a few hours the status should move from 'Unverified' to 'Recording conversions'. If it doesn't, the tag isn't firing, and nothing else you do to the account matters until it does.
Do this before you spend on optimisation, bidding strategies or new campaigns. An account with broken tracking is an account flying blind, however sophisticated everything else looks.