What is a conversion?
A conversion is an action you want a visitor from an ad to take. For a service company it is almost always a lead: a call, a quote request, an email or a booking. A click or a page view is not a conversion.
What should you measure?
- Calls from the ad: when someone calls directly from the phone number in the search result.
- Taps on the phone number on the page: when someone browsing on a phone taps the number on your site.
- Form submission: a quote request or contact form, measured on a successful submission, not when the form is opened.
- Taps on an email link.
- Booking: only the final step of the booking, not the move to the booking page.
Primary and secondary conversions
In Google Ads every conversion action is either primary or secondary. Only primary ones affect bidding. If the account has, for example, YouTube views or page browsing as primary, Google chases those instead of real leads. Keep only the ones that truly mean a customer as primary.
The most common mistakes
The same lead is counted twice
If the page has two Tag Manager containers, or both an old agency's tracking and your own, the same call can be recorded twice. Reports look good but the numbers are wrong.
Counting method "every" for leads
When the same person taps the phone number three times, that is one lead, not three. For leads the counting method should be "one".
Tracking lives in the agency's account
If tracking was built in an advertising agency's own tools, it leaves with the agency. Tracking should be built into the company's own Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, so it stays with you.
An external booking system doesn't pass the information on
Booking and quote forms running on a separate platform don't always tell your site that a booking was made. Then you need a separate solution, for example a message from the booking window to the page that Tag Manager receives.
How do I check that my own tracking works?
- In Google Ads, go to Goals → Conversions: which actions are primary and when did they last record a conversion.
- Make a test lead yourself and check whether it shows up once, twice or not at all.
- Compare the month's conversions with how many leads you really got.
A tracking check is included in every Google Ads package.