How to Perform a Google Ads Conversion Audit
So, you've set up your Google Ads campaign and are getting all the clicks and impressions.
But the sales aren’t pouring in; your inbox is empty.
What’s missing?
In this post, I’ll teach you how to distinguish between vanity metrics and conversions that matter. This is the first (and most important) step in turning your struggling Google Ads account into a money-making powerhouse.
I’ll cover:
What a conversion should (and shouldn’t) be
Why conversion tracking is important
How to audit your account’s conversions
So, first, what's a conversion?
Any action that provides value to your biz.
✅ For eComm: sales (with the exact dollar revenue).
✅ For lead gen: any point of contact where you get someones details - eg phone calls, form fills, free trial sign-ups, etc.
What's not a conversion?
❌ Add to cart
❌ Starting the checkout process
❌ Page views
❌ Time on site
❌ Button clicks
Like clicks, these metrics offer you insights but they don’t make you money.
Note for Shopify users: If you linked Shopify to Google Ads (which they prompt you to do) you’re probably tracking things like “add to cart”. If you are, it means your conversions are potentially over-inflated.
Why Conversion Tracking is Important
🔍 You need conversions to optimise your account
Without proper conversion tracking, you’re flying blind. You can’t optimise your ads effectively because you don’t know what is (and isn’t) making you money.
With accurate conversion data:
For eComm: You can optimise your campaigns based on Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
This metric tells you that for every $ spent here, you’re making $$$ there.
You can push harder where you have good performance (a high ROAS). Similarly, you can pull back where you’re not getting any sales, or poor performance (low ROAS).
For lead gen: You can optimise based on your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
This metric tells you the exact $ amount you're paying for each qualified lead.
You can push harder where you have good performance (a low CPA). Similarly, you can pull back where you’re not getting any leads, or poor performance (high CPA).
🧠 A.I. needs (the right) data
Smart campaigns (like Performance Max) and smart bidding (like Max Conversions) both need perfect conversion tracking. Without it, Google won’t understand valuable actions, so it’ll waste your money on irrelevant clicks.
Now, imagine this: Google understands when a sale happens, but not the exact revenue. This means Google won’t know the difference between a $5 sale and a $200 sale. In this case, Google will chase after the easier conversions (the $5 product).
Want me to check your conversions? 👈
How to perform a conversion audit
1) Go to your website and identify every action that can provide value to your biz (eg calls, purchases, form fills, etc)
2) Open Google Ads
3) Go to Tools & Settings > Conversions:
This is an eg of what you might see:
4) Once here, you want to:
Verify that every action you identified on your website has their own conversion.
Make sure you’re not tracking actions that don’t provide value (add to cart, page views, etc).
Dig into each conversion so that you know its firing correctly.
Here’s how you can do this:
🎉 Video 1 - Breaking down a conversion (Loom - 10mins)
🎉 Video 2 - Troubleshooting common issues (Loom - 5mins)
See something that doesn’t look right in your account? 👈
Breaking down a conversion
This is all covered in Video 1 (above).
Action optimisation:
Primary - the conversion is being actively tracked. This is what we want to audit.
Secondary - the conversion being ignored by Google Ads and is just tracking in the background. You can ignore these.
Conversion source - This is how the conversion has been set up.
The most common are:
Website - you've set it up manually. This might be within Google Ads (for form fills with a thank you page), with code on the site, or with GTM. This is the most common source type.
Website (Google Analytics (GA4) - it's been imported from Google Analytics 4.
Website (Google Analytics (GAU) - it's been imported from GAU. It is out of date and won't work.
Google hosted or google- this has been set up automatically by Google. They either don’t work or they’re tracking the wrong things. If possible, delete these or set them to “Secondary”. If not possible, just ignore them.
Calls from Ads - This is tracking calls, and has been set up within Google Ads.
All conv.
This is the number of times the conversion has taken place.
It’s likely this will have a decimal. That’s okay, it’s because of your attribution model (more on that later).
All conv. Value
This is the value associated with the conversion.
For sales, this should be the exact dollar revenue.
For most leads, this will be $0. In advanced accounts, you'll determine the value of your leads (based on your close rate) and assign a value to these conversions.
Both All conv. and All conv. value are based on the time frame specified in the top right (Google defaults to the last 30 days).
Status
Active - Google Ads has had a conversion in the last 7 days. This means it's working.
No Recent Conversions - Google Ads has seen the conversion fire, but it was from a different traffic source (eg a sale from someone that didn't click on an ad). This is still good - it means it's working.
Inactive - This conversion hasn't been verified. This could be because its a new conversion, the action hasn’t been completed in a while, or it’s broken. If you’re not sure, complete the action on your website, (eg if it’s a purchase conversion, use an 100% off voucher and complete a sale), wait 24 hours, open Google Ads, and - if it’s still unverified - the conversion is broken. If it’s changed to No Recent Conversions then it’s working.
Count
One:
No matter how many times a person completes this conversion, Google Ads will only count it once.
This is advised for lead gen, because no matter how many forms one person fills out, they're still only one lead.
This will only look back on your attribution window (more on this below).
Every:
If someone completed multiple conversions, Google Ads will count every instance.
This is advised for eComm as you're earning money for each sale.
Repeat rate
This is how often the conversion is performed by an individual, on average (when looking at the time range in the top right).
Anything over ~1.07 indicates that there's probably over-counting happening. This is especially common for Shopify stores.
Click-through conversion window
The attribution window (or conversion window) is the period of time Google can claim a click led to a conversion.
In most cases, we advise 30 days as the default.
Here's an example of a 30-day window: someone clicked on your ad 20 days ago and purchased today, this counts as a conversion. If they clicked on your ad 40 days ago and purchased today, this would not count as a conversion.
Attribution
By default, this should be DDA (data-driven attribution).
DDA will share the conversion between multiple campaigns/days, giving more weight to the interactions that had more of an impact. Eg. someone clicks on your shopping ad 20 days ago, but they don’t buy. Then, they click on your brand ad today, and they buy. In this case, Google will share the conversion between the two campaigns (shopping/brand) and the two dates (20 days ago/today). That’s how you can have conversions presented as decimals.
If you’re interested in finding out more, here's a summary from Google on the different attribution models.
