Why your Google Ads conversions are probably wrong

Short versionMost accounts we audit count things as leads that aren't leads. That doesn't just inflate reports. Google's bidding learns from those conversions, so it spends your budget chasing the wrong outcome. Fix tracking before you change anything else, and expect the reported numbers to drop when you do.

When we take over or audit a Google Ads account, the first thing we look at isn't keywords or ads. It's conversion tracking. In most accounts, something in it is wrong.

This matters more than it sounds. Smart bidding, which most accounts use now, decides who to show your ads to based on who converted in the past. If "converted" includes people who didn't enquire, the system gets very good at finding more people who won't enquire.

The problems we see most

A form that counts twice

The contact form fires a conversion on submit, and again on the thank-you page. Or the tag fires on both a click trigger and a form submission trigger. Every real enquiry shows as two. We found exactly this on an industrial supplier's account recently.

Soft actions counted as leads

Ebook downloads, newsletter signups, "time on site" goals and page views set as primary conversions. They might be worth tracking, but they shouldn't be in the number Google is bidding toward. One buyer's agency account had an ebook download quietly counted as a lead.

Calls not tracked, or every call counted

Service businesses get a lot of leads by phone. Some accounts don't track calls at all, so Google never learns from them. Others count every call, including the 15-second wrong numbers and existing clients ringing about invoices. Setting a sensible minimum call length fixes most of this.

Two systems counting the same thing

A Google Ads conversion tag and an imported GA4 conversion both counting the same form, both set to primary. Or an old Universal Analytics tag still running years after it stopped mattering. The result is double counting that's hard to spot unless you look at each action individually.

Conversions that can never happen

A "phone call from landing page" action on landing pages with no phone number on them. A booking action for a booking tool that was removed. These don't inflate numbers, but they tell you nobody has looked at the setup in a long time.

What happens when you fix it

The reported numbers go down. That's the uncomfortable part, and it's why a lot of agencies don't fix it.

If an account reports 60 conversions a month and 20 of them were duplicates or ebook downloads, the honest number is 40. Cost per lead goes up on paper overnight. Nothing about the business changed, only the measurement.

We always explain this to clients before we make the change, so a lower number reads as "more honest", not "worse". Then we re-baseline and judge everything from there.

Within a few weeks, bidding starts learning from real enquiries. That's usually when cost per real lead starts to come down.

A quick self-check

Open Google Ads, go to Goals, then Summary, and look at every conversion action. For each one ask:

Is this a real enquiry from a potential customer?
Is it set to primary, so it's used for bidding?
Is anything else counting the same action?
When did it last record a conversion?

If you can't answer those quickly, there's a good chance something's off. Our Google Ads management always starts here, and it's one of the things we check in a free review.