Until a conversion means something, nothing else in the account is real.
Roughly half the accounts we audit are optimising toward something that is not a lead. Fixing measurement is unglamorous, comes before everything else, and frequently improves results more than any change to bidding.
- A thank-you page view counted as a lead, which reloads count again
- Every phone call counted, including wrong numbers and suppliers
- Form submission and confirmation page both firing, doubling every lead
- A click on an email address counted the same as a completed enquiry
- Newsletter signups mixed in with sales enquiries at the same value
- GA4 goals imported alongside native conversions, counting everything twice
- Conversions still firing from a form that was removed months ago
- Nothing at all tracking WhatsApp or text message taps
What we set up
Separate conversion actions for separate things
A form submission, a WhatsApp tap, a text tap, a phone call and a booking are five different events with five different values. Collapsing them into one number makes it impossible to tell which campaigns produce which, and guarantees the account optimises for whichever is easiest to generate.
Realistic call thresholds
Calls get counted above a duration that reflects a genuine enquiry in your category — long enough to exclude wrong numbers and hang-ups, short enough not to lose real leads. In emergency categories that threshold is shorter than people assume, because a lockout call can be booked in forty seconds.
Values that reflect reality
If a maintenance enquiry is worth $200 and an installation enquiry is worth $9,000, the account needs to know. Otherwise automated bidding will happily produce twenty of the first and none of the second and report a beautiful cost per lead.
GA4 connected properly, once
GA4 and Google Ads conversions overlapping is one of the most common causes of inflated numbers. We pick one system of record for bidding, keep the other for analysis, and make sure nothing is counted twice.
Offline conversion import
Where your CRM or scheduling software allows it, we send outcomes back: booked, quoted, signed, and the value. This is where an account stops optimising for enquiries and starts optimising for revenue. In categories with long cycles or wide value ranges — legal, solar, remodeling, dental implants — it is the difference between an account that improves and one that plateaus.
Consent handling
Consent mode configured so that measurement continues to work within what visitors have agreed to, including modelled conversions where direct measurement is not permitted.
How we verify it, rather than assuming
Every conversion action gets tested end to end before launch: submit the form, tap the WhatsApp button, place a test call, and confirm each one appears exactly once, in the right place, with the right value. Then we check again a week after launch, because tracking has a habit of breaking quietly when someone updates a plugin.
You get a short written summary of what is being tracked, what each action counts, and what it is worth — so that when you read a report saying you got fourteen leads, you know precisely what those fourteen things were.
A free check: if you only want one thing looked at, this is the one worth choosing. Send read-only account access and we will tell you in writing what your conversions are actually counting. Request the audit.
Questions about tracking
Why does bad tracking make things worse rather than just unclear?
Because automated bidding acts on it. If your account counts every phone call over three seconds as a lead, Smart Bidding will find more of whatever produces short calls — and spend real money doing it. Bad data does not leave you neutral, it actively steers the budget in the wrong direction.
Do I need call tracking software?
If a meaningful share of your leads arrive by phone, yes. Expect $30 to $60 a month paid directly to the provider. Without it you are optimising on a fraction of your conversions and guessing at the rest.
What are offline conversions?
Sending the outcome back. A lead comes in, it goes into your CRM, and later it becomes a booked job or a signed contract. Uploading that result to Google Ads lets the bidding learn which keywords produce customers rather than which produce enquiries. In high-value categories it is the single most valuable improvement available.
Will this work with consent mode and privacy rules?
It has to. We configure consent handling and use Google’s consent mode where required, which keeps modelled conversion data flowing while respecting what visitors have agreed to. Getting this wrong tends to show up as conversions mysteriously dropping rather than as an error message.