Your conversion tracking is probably wrong - here is how to check

I will say this plainly: conversion tracking is the most important technical setup in your Google Ads account. Everything else - your bidding strategy, your budget allocation, your campaign performance assessment - depends on it being accurate. And yet it is consistently where I find the most problems.

The most common conversion tracking mistakes

Double counting is number one. I regularly find accounts tracking the same conversion twice - once via Google Ads tag and again through a Google Analytics goal import. This inflates conversion numbers and makes campaigns look better than they are. Check your conversion actions list and confirm there are no duplicates.

Secondary conversions counted as primary is another one. Phone calls, page views, and brochure downloads are useful signals but they should not be weighted equally with a form submission or a purchase. Primary conversions should be the actions that most closely map to revenue. Everything else is a secondary metric.

Tag firing issues come third. Tags that fire on every page rather than just the thank-you page, or tags that fire multiple times on the same session, create data that looks good but means nothing. Use Google Tag Assistant or GA4 DebugView to verify your tags are firing exactly when they should - no more, no less.

Enhanced conversions - are you using them

Enhanced conversions allow you to send hashed first-party data back to Google to improve conversion matching. This is particularly valuable as third-party cookies continue to be phased out. If you are collecting email addresses on form submissions, enhanced conversions can match those to Google accounts and recover conversions that would otherwise be lost. The setup takes an hour and the improvement in data accuracy is worth it.

How to audit your conversion tracking

Run your conversion report at account level for the last 90 days. Look at conversion rates by campaign and by week. If you see spikes or drops that do not correlate with any campaign changes or external events, that is a tracking issue. Check whether your conversion window matches your actual sales cycle. A 30-day window is the default but if your customers typically convert within 48 hours, a shorter window gives you cleaner data to work with.

Also check that your value tracking is accurate. If you are running Target ROAS bidding without accurate revenue values attached to conversions, the bidding algorithm is flying blind. Fix the data first. Then turn on smart bidding.