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You're checking your Google Ads dashboard and something doesn't add up. The conversions reported don't match your actual sales, leads, or CRM data. Maybe Google is counting more conversions than you actually received, or perhaps entire conversion events are missing.
This mismatch isn't just frustrating—it's actively sabotaging your ad spend decisions and campaign optimization. When Google Ads shows wrong conversions, you're essentially flying blind with your marketing budget.
The good news: this is a fixable problem. In this guide, you'll work through a systematic troubleshooting process to identify exactly why your conversion data is inaccurate and implement the right fixes. By the end, you'll have accurate conversion tracking that reflects your real business results.
Your first stop is the conversion actions panel in Google Ads. Navigate to Tools & Settings, then click on Conversions under the Measurement section. This is where every conversion action lives, and misconfigured settings here are often the culprit behind wrong conversion numbers.
Start by reviewing the counting method for each conversion action. Google gives you two options: "One" or "Every." This single setting can make or break your data accuracy.
Use "One" for lead generation: If you're tracking form submissions, phone calls, or newsletter signups, you want to count only one conversion per click. Multiple thank-you page loads shouldn't inflate your numbers.
Use "Every" for e-commerce: If someone buys three products in separate transactions, those are three legitimate conversions. E-commerce sites need "Every" to accurately reflect purchase volume.
The mistake? Many advertisers accidentally set lead generation actions to "Every," causing massive over-counting when users refresh thank-you pages or when tags fire multiple times.
Next, examine your conversion windows. Google's default is a 30-day click window and 1-day view window. This means any conversion happening within 30 days of someone clicking your ad gets attributed to that ad—even if they converted through a completely different channel later.
If your sales cycle is shorter, tighten these windows. If you're selling enterprise software with 90-day sales cycles, extend them. Mismatched windows create false attribution, making campaigns look more or less effective than they actually are.
Now scan for duplicate conversion actions. It's surprisingly common to have multiple actions tracking the same event—perhaps one from Google Tag Manager, another from hardcoded tracking, and a third from a plugin. Each duplicate multiplies your reported conversions. Understanding proper Google Ads conversion tracking setup helps you avoid these common pitfalls.
Look at the "Include in Conversions" column. This toggle determines whether a conversion action feeds into your campaign reporting and Smart Bidding optimization. Your primary business goal (purchases, qualified leads) should be included. Secondary metrics like newsletter signups or page views should be excluded to avoid polluting your optimization data.
Document what you find here. If you spot a lead form set to "Every" when it should be "One," you've likely found your smoking gun.
Even perfectly configured conversion actions fail if the tracking code doesn't fire correctly. This step is about getting technical and testing your actual implementation.
Download and install Google Tag Assistant, a Chrome extension that shows you exactly which tags fire on any page. Navigate to your conversion pages—checkout confirmation, thank-you pages, success screens—and activate Tag Assistant.
You should see your Google Ads conversion tag firing once and only once when the page loads. If it's not firing at all, your code isn't implemented. If it fires multiple times, you've found your over-counting issue.
But don't stop at passive observation. Run a full test conversion yourself. Fill out your lead form or complete a test purchase using a real credit card (you can refund it later). Watch Tag Assistant during every step of the process.
Pay special attention to the conversion linker tag. This tag needs to fire on every page of your site—not just conversion pages. It sets first-party cookies that help Google track users across your domain. Without it, you'll miss conversions, especially from users who don't convert immediately after clicking an ad.
Check for tags firing on the wrong pages. A common mistake: the conversion tag fires on the thank-you page, but that page is accessible directly via URL. Users bookmark it, refresh it, or navigate to it accidentally, and each visit registers as a new conversion.
The solution? Implement one-time firing logic. Your tag should only fire when specific parameters are present in the URL (like a transaction ID) or when a session variable confirms a genuine conversion just occurred.
Look for JavaScript errors in your browser console (press F12 to open developer tools). Errors on the page can prevent tracking tags from executing. A single broken script earlier in the page load sequence can silently kill your conversion tracking.
If you're using Google Tag Manager, verify that your triggers are configured correctly. A trigger set to "All Pages" when it should be "Thank You Page Only" will fire your conversion tag everywhere, creating phantom conversions. For WooCommerce users, following a proper Google Tag Manager setup guide can prevent these configuration errors.
This detective work takes time, but it's essential. You can't fix what you can't see, and actually watching your tags fire (or fail to fire) reveals problems that dashboard reviews never catch.
Here's where things get conceptually tricky. Your conversion numbers might be technically correct—but reported in ways that don't match your expectations or CRM data.
Google Ads uses attribution models to assign credit for conversions. The default data-driven attribution model spreads credit across multiple touchpoints in the customer journey. Your CRM, on the other hand, probably uses last-touch attribution (crediting the final interaction) or first-touch (crediting the initial discovery).
This creates apparent discrepancies. Google might show 100 conversions for a campaign, while your CRM shows only 60 where that campaign was the last touch. Neither is wrong—they're just measuring different things.
Then there's conversion lag. When you look at today's data in Google Ads, you're seeing conversions attributed to clicks that happened days or weeks ago. Google reports conversions on the click date, not the conversion date.
Think about it: Someone clicks your ad on January 15th but converts on January 22nd. That conversion appears in your January 15th reporting, not January 22nd. If you're comparing "conversions today" between Google Ads and your CRM (which records them on the actual conversion date), you're comparing apples to oranges.
The solution? Use conversion date reporting in Google Ads. Go to your columns, add "Conversions (by conversion time)" instead of the default "Conversions." Now you're comparing matching time periods.
Cross-device conversions add another layer of complexity. Someone might click your ad on mobile, research on tablet, and convert on desktop. Google tracks this journey and attributes the conversion to the original mobile click. Your analytics platform, if it's not properly configured, might see this as a direct or organic desktop conversion.
Finally, review your view-through conversion settings. These count conversions from people who saw your display or video ads but didn't click. They're valuable for brand awareness campaigns but can inflate numbers if you're not expecting them. Check your view-through window settings and decide whether these conversions should be included in your primary metrics.
Understanding these attribution and timing nuances doesn't fix wrong data, but it often explains why your numbers look wrong when they're actually just reported differently than you expected.
Now it's time to play detective with your actual business data. Export your Google Ads conversion data for a specific time period—let's say the last 30 days. Pull the same date range from your CRM showing actual customers, leads, or purchases.
Put these side by side in a spreadsheet. You're looking for patterns, not perfection. Some discrepancy is normal due to attribution differences we discussed earlier, but major gaps signal real problems.
If Google Ads shows 200 conversions and your CRM shows 150 new leads, you're over-counting by 33%. That's significant. Dig deeper: Are there specific campaigns or ad groups where the discrepancy is largest? That narrows your troubleshooting focus.
Now bring in Google Analytics 4 as a third reference point. GA4 tracks conversions independently from Google Ads. If GA4 and your CRM roughly align but Google Ads is way off, the problem is definitely in your Google Ads tracking implementation. Understanding why Google Analytics shows missing conversions can help you identify gaps in your tracking setup.
Look for device-specific patterns. Export conversions by device type. If mobile shows massive over-counting but desktop is accurate, you might have a mobile-specific implementation issue—perhaps the mobile thank-you page is more prone to refreshes or the tag fires on page visibility changes.
Check for time-based patterns. Are weekends showing unusual conversion spikes? That might indicate bot traffic or testing activity being counted as real conversions. Are certain hours of the day completely missing conversions? That suggests intermittent tracking failures.
Document everything. Create a simple spreadsheet: Google Ads says X, CRM says Y, GA4 says Z. Calculate the percentage discrepancy. Using a marketing campaign tracking spreadsheet helps you organize this data and identify patterns across campaigns. This becomes your baseline for measuring improvement after you implement fixes.
The goal here isn't to make all three sources match perfectly—they measure slightly different things. The goal is to identify whether you're systematically over-counting, under-counting, or misattributing conversions, and by roughly how much.
Browser-based tracking is increasingly unreliable. Ad blockers strip out tracking scripts. iOS users who've enabled App Tracking Transparency are invisible to many tracking methods. Third-party cookies are being phased out across all major browsers.
The result? Your browser-based Google Ads conversion tracking is missing a growing percentage of actual conversions. You're not over-counting—you're dramatically under-counting, and it's getting worse every quarter.
Server-side tracking solves this by sending conversion data directly from your server to Google Ads, bypassing the browser entirely. No JavaScript tags to block, no cookies to reject, no client-side vulnerabilities.
Google offers several server-side options. The Google Ads API allows you to send conversion data programmatically. Enhanced conversions let you send hashed first-party data (email addresses, phone numbers) that Google uses to match conversions to ad clicks more accurately.
Here's how to get started with enhanced conversions in Google Ads: In your Google Ads conversion action settings, enable "Enhanced conversions." Then modify your conversion tag to collect first-party data from form fields—typically email address at minimum. Google hashes this data before transmission for privacy compliance.
When someone converts, Google receives both the conversion signal and the hashed email. Even if cookies were blocked or the user switched devices, Google can match that email to the original ad click and properly attribute the conversion.
For businesses with more complex needs, Cometly's server-side tracking captures conversions that browser-based methods miss entirely. It connects your ad platforms, CRM, and website at the server level, creating a complete view of every customer journey regardless of ad blockers or privacy settings.
The difference is dramatic. Companies implementing server-side tracking typically discover they were missing 20-40% of actual conversions. Your campaigns weren't performing poorly—you just couldn't see their full impact. Learning how ad tracking tools help you scale ads with accurate data reveals the true potential of your campaigns.
After implementing server-side tracking, run your cross-reference test again. Compare Google Ads data to CRM data. The gap should shrink significantly, giving you confidence that you're finally seeing accurate conversion counts.
Accurate conversion tracking isn't just about better reporting—it directly improves campaign performance. Google's Smart Bidding algorithms learn from conversion data. Feed them wrong signals, and they optimize toward the wrong outcomes.
When you fix your conversion tracking, Smart Bidding suddenly has accurate training data. It learns which audiences, keywords, and placements actually drive business results. Your cost-per-acquisition improves because the algorithm is finally optimizing toward real conversions, not phantom ones.
For businesses with longer sales cycles, offline conversion imports are essential. If someone clicks your ad today but doesn't become a customer for 60 days, that conversion needs to be fed back to Google Ads—even though it happened outside the typical conversion window.
Set up offline conversion imports through Google Ads. You'll need to capture the Google Click ID (GCLID) when users first arrive from ads, store it in your CRM alongside the lead record, and then upload conversion data later when that lead closes.
This tells Google: "Remember that click from 60 days ago? It actually resulted in a $50,000 sale." Now Google knows that campaign, keyword, and audience are valuable, even though the conversion happened long after the click. Proper Google Ads keyword optimization becomes much more effective when you're feeding the algorithm accurate conversion signals.
Enhanced conversions take this further by improving match rates. When you send hashed first-party data with each conversion, Google can more accurately connect conversions to the original ad interactions, even across devices and sessions.
Cometly's Conversion Sync automates this entire process. It captures every touchpoint from ad click through CRM conversion, then feeds enriched conversion data back to Google Ads. The platform's AI identifies which conversions are most valuable and ensures Google's algorithms receive complete, accurate signals for optimization.
After implementing conversion sync, monitor your Smart Bidding performance. You should see improvements in key metrics: conversion rates stabilize or increase, cost-per-acquisition drops, and return on ad spend improves. These gains come from the algorithm finally having trustworthy data to work with.
The feedback loop is powerful. Better conversion data leads to better bidding decisions, which leads to better campaign performance, which generates more accurate conversion data. You've transformed a vicious cycle of bad data into a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.
Let's recap your troubleshooting checklist. Start by auditing conversion action settings—verify counting methods match your business model, check conversion windows align with your sales cycle, and eliminate duplicate actions. Then test your tracking implementation with Tag Assistant and real test conversions to confirm tags fire correctly.
Next, understand attribution and timing differences. Switch to conversion date reporting, review your attribution model, and account for cross-device and view-through conversions. Cross-reference your data by comparing Google Ads numbers against CRM records and Google Analytics 4 to identify patterns in discrepancies. A thorough Google Analytics audit can reveal additional tracking issues affecting your data accuracy.
Finally, implement server-side tracking to capture conversions that browser-based methods miss, and set up conversion sync to feed accurate signals back to Google Ads for better algorithm performance.
Accurate conversion data isn't just about cleaner reports—it directly impacts how Google's algorithms optimize your campaigns. When you feed the platform correct signals, Smart Bidding works better, your cost-per-acquisition drops, and you can finally trust the numbers when scaling campaigns.
The difference between flying blind and having complete visibility is transformative. You stop second-guessing every campaign decision. You identify winning strategies faster. You scale with confidence because your data reflects reality.
Ready to stop guessing and start seeing which ads actually drive revenue? Get your free demo to see how Cometly connects your ads, CRM, and conversions for complete attribution accuracy. Discover how AI-driven recommendations can transform your ad strategy—capturing every touchpoint to maximize your conversions.
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