How to track leads from Google Ads.

What to set up first

Lead tracking for Google Ads does two jobs. Yours is to know which campaign and keyword brought each enquiry, and which of those enquiries became customers. Google's is to be told about each enquiry and each customer, so it can report them and bid for more people like them. Set them up in this order:

• Check that auto-tagging is on, so every ad click carries a click ID.
• Add utm tags to your ads, for your own records and analytics.
• Make your form save the click ID and the tags with every enquiry.
• Create a conversion action that counts an enquiry only when it has really gone through.
• Turn on enhanced conversions for leads.
• Import what happened to each lead, such as qualified or won, from your CRM or a spreadsheet.
• Test the whole chain before you raise the budget.

The first three steps already show you, in your own records, which campaigns bring customers. The rest teach Google Ads. If you also run Facebook and Instagram ads, how to track leads from Meta ads covers that side, which works differently.

Save the click ID with every enquiry

With auto-tagging on, Google adds a parameter called gclid to the page address after each ad click: a code unique to that click. Auto-tagging is on by default for new accounts. Check it under Account settings in Google Ads, especially if someone else set the account up.

To be useful later, the click ID has to travel with the enquiry:

• Add a hidden field for it to each form, filled from the page address when the page loads.
• If visitors may look at other pages before they enquire, the site has to keep the click ID until the form is sent, usually in a cookie on your own domain. Where consent rules apply, that follows the visitor's choice.
• Store it in a field of its own in your CRM or enquiry sheet, next to the name and the date, exactly as it arrived. The click ID is case sensitive.
• Check redirects. If your ad link redirects, the click ID has to survive to the final page, or tracking breaks without an error.

A finished enquiry might read: Tuesday 7.18pm, boiler repair, Hove, the click ID in its own field, campaign boiler-repair, keyword boiler repair, landing page /boiler-repair/. When we connect a form to a CRM, we check which fields its API can take, so details such as the campaign land in fields of their own instead of a note nobody can sort.

Add utm tags for your own records

The click ID means something only to Google. For your own analytics and enquiry list, add utm tags too. The final URL suffix in Google Ads attaches them to the end of every landing page address, and you can set it once for the account or for each campaign:

utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=boiler-repair

Google can also fill in details at each click with ValueTrack parameters. {keyword}, used in the tracking template, gives the keyword in your account that matched the search. It is not the exact words the person typed: those are in the search terms report.

Save the tags in hidden fields beside the click ID. Then your enquiry sheet can be sorted by campaign without opening Google Ads, and it still works for visitors who declined tracking.

Count an enquiry only when it really goes through

Create a conversion action for website enquiries, and make it fire when the enquiry has been accepted: when the thank-you message appears after a successful send. A tap on the send button is too early, because some sends fail. Every load of a thank-you page is too often, because people reload pages and come back to them.

• Set the count to One. Google recommends counting one conversion per click for leads, because a second form from the same person is rarely a second lead.
• Give it a plain name, such as Website enquiry, and keep that meaning.
• Make it the primary conversion for your lead campaigns until you import something better. Primary actions appear in the Conversions column and are used for bidding. Secondary ones are reported under All conversions only.
• Count calls as a conversion action of their own.

When we build a landing page for ads, we check that auto-tagging is switched on and that a conversion counts only when an enquiry arrives, after consent where the law requires it.

Turn on enhanced conversions for leads

Enhanced conversions for leads is Google's upgraded version of importing offline conversions. When someone sends your form, the Google tag picks up the email address or phone number they typed and sends it to Google hashed, which means turned into a code. Later, when you tell Google that the same email or phone became a qualified lead or a customer, Google matches the two and credits the right ad click.

It needs:

• Google's customer data terms accepted in Google Ads, under Goals, then Settings. They apply to the whole account.
• Auto-tagging switched on.
• An email address or phone number field on the lead form.
• The Google tag or Google Tag Manager on the site, set up to pick up that field when the form is sent.

Google still recommends saving the click ID as well. With both, each lead has the best chance of being matched to its click.

A hashed email is still personal data: the point of sending it is that Google can match it to a person. Where consent is needed, it follows the same choice as the rest of your ad tracking.

Send back what happened to each lead

A form send tells Google that someone enquired. What you want Google to learn is who became a customer. Create offline conversion actions for the stages that matter, and import them:

• A qualified lead: someone in your area, wanting a service you offer, who answered when you called.
• A won job: a quote accepted or a booking made. Add a value if your jobs differ a lot in size, so bidding can favour the bigger ones.

Then decide which one bidding aims at. A sensible start is to keep the website enquiry as primary and switch to the qualified lead once enough are imported each month, with the others as secondary, reported without steering the bids.

Google offers several ways to import them: Google Ads Data Manager, which Google recommends, with connections to sources such as Google Sheets, HubSpot and Salesforce; a file you upload by hand; Zapier; or the Google Ads API for a custom connection. Each row carries the click ID or the email or phone, the conversion name, the date and time and, if you use one, a value.

Google limits how long after a click an imported conversion can still count, and the limit depends on how you import. Send outcomes every day or week, never in one batch at the end of the quarter.

One enquiry, from search to won job

A heating engineer in home services, covering Brighton and Hove, runs a Google Ads campaign for boiler repairs:

• Tuesday, 7.15pm: someone searches 'boiler repair hove' on a phone and taps the ad. The landing page opens with a click ID and the utm tags in its address.
• 7.18pm: they send the form with their name, phone and email. The enquiry reaches the shared inbox and the enquiry sheet with the click ID and campaign in fields of their own. The thank-you message fires the Website enquiry conversion, and the Google tag sends the email, hashed.
• Wednesday, 8.30am: the office calls back, books a visit for Thursday and marks the enquiry as qualified.
• Thursday: the engineer quotes for a new part. On Friday morning the customer accepts, and the office marks the job as won, with its value.
• On its next run, Data Manager imports the new qualified and won rows from the sheet into Google Ads.
• A month later, the owner compares cost per won job by campaign and keyword, and moves budget from a keyword that brought plenty of enquiries but few jobs to one that brought fewer enquiries and more jobs.

None of this needs a CRM. A shared sheet with the right columns is enough to start, and spreadsheet or CRM says when to move on. The callback the next morning matters as much as the tracking: enquiry follow-up makes sure each enquiry has an owner and nobody waits.

Count calls as well

If your customers phone more than they write, count calls too. Google Ads can count them in three ways:

• Calls from ads, through a call button on the ad and a Google forwarding number.
• Calls from your website: for visitors from ads, a Google forwarding number replaces your number on the site, and a call counts once it lasts longer than a length you set.
• Imported calls, if you log calls and their outcomes in another system.

Google forwarding numbers are available only in some countries, so check yours. Whatever you use, ask new callers how they found you and note it on the record, and count taps on the phone number as interest rather than leads. Local Services Ads handle calls in their own way: see Local Services Ads or Google Ads.

Consent, and what it changes

If you have visitors in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, Google's EU user consent policy applies. It asks for the visitor's consent for cookies where the law requires it, and for the collection and use of personal data to personalise ads, with a record of that consent kept. Google's consent mode passes each visitor's choice to your Google tags, so they behave accordingly. In practice:

• Your consent banner decides whether Google's ad tags set cookies, and consent mode tells Google what the visitor chose.
• The hashed email or phone from enhanced conversions follows the same choice.
• Your privacy notice names Google Ads and says what it receives.
• Health businesses take extra care. A page about a treatment plus a conversion can reveal something about a person's health, so agree with your adviser which pages carry the tag.

Visitors who decline are missing from Google's numbers but still in your enquiry sheet, which is one more reason to keep the tags and outcomes in your own records. Ask whoever advises you on privacy what applies to you.

Test it before you raise the budget

• Open the landing page with a test click ID typed into the address, and check that the hidden field fills in.
• Send the form and check that the enquiry arrives with the click ID and the campaign in their own fields.
• Use Google's Tag Assistant to check that the conversion fires once, on the thank-you message, and not on the button tap.
• Reload the thank-you message and check that no second conversion fires.
• Decline the consent banner and check that the ad tags stay quiet.
• After the first import, check the conversion action in Google Ads for errors and unmatched rows.

Repeat the test after any change to the form, the site or the banner. Tracking breaks quietly, and the first sign is often a report that looks wrong weeks later. Before you run ads has the checks for the page itself.

Read the results by campaign and search term

Each month, put two sources side by side: Google Ads for what each campaign and keyword cost, and your own sheet for the enquiries, qualified leads and won jobs each one brought. They will not match exactly. Google credits a conversion to the click that came before it within a set window, while your sheet knows only the enquiries that arrived with their tags.

Decide which campaigns to keep on cost per won job. Then read the search terms report and add negative keywords for searches that bring the wrong people, such as jobs, courses or how to do it yourself.

Mistakes that make the numbers lie

• The conversion fires on the button tap, so failed sends count as leads.
• Two actions count the same enquiry, such as a Google Ads conversion and an imported analytics one, both set as primary.
• A redirect or a form plugin drops the click ID, so imports match nothing.
• Every enquiry imported as won, which teaches Google nothing.
• Outcomes uploaded months late, after Google has stopped accepting them for those clicks.
• Calls never counted, so the campaign that makes the phone ring looks like a failure.
• Test enquiries left in the sheet and imported as real leads.

Saving the click ID and copying each enquiry into the sheet is a small automation, and it is the part that most often goes missing.