I wrote a post a while back about why you shouldn’t always rely on Google Ads stats to make decisions. If you haven’t read it, I’d encourage you to check it out here. Understanding Google Ads Conversion Tracking is also crucial for accurate insights.

The short version: Google Ads gives you a lot of numbers, but numbers without context can lead you in the wrong direction. This post is the natural companion to that one — but instead of talking about misinterpreting stats, I want to talk about something more fundamental. What happens when the stats themselves are wrong?

I’m talking about conversion tracking. And the uncomfortable truth is that for most accounts I audit, the conversion tracking is broken, misconfigured, or measuring the wrong things entirely. The campaign dashboard looks great. The actual business results? Not so much. This is especially true when considering Google Ads Conversion Tracking.

Here are the specific ways improper conversion tracking inflates your reported performance — and what to do about it.

Counting Every Click on a Button as a Conversion

It goes like this. Someone installs a conversion tag on a button click — a Contact Us button, a phone number, a chat widget — and calls it a conversion. The problem is that clicking a button and becoming a customer are not the same thing.

When you optimize a campaign for button-click conversions, Google’s algorithm learns to find people who click buttons. Not people who buy your service. Not people who call and book an appointment. People who click. That’s a very different audience, and it’s one you’re probably paying way too much to reach.

The fix here is to track outcomes, not actions. A submitted contact form is better than a click on a contact button. A confirmed phone call of meaningful duration is better than a tap on a phone number. A thank-you page view after a form submission is better than a form landing page view. Track what happens at the end of the action, not the beginning.

Firing the Conversion Tag Multiple Times for the Same Lead

This one silently inflates your conversion numbers, and it happens more than you’d think. If your conversion tag is set up improperly, it can fire every time a user visits a confirmation page — not just the first time. So if a user bookmarks your thank-you page and returns to it three times, Google Ads records three conversions from a single lead.

Similarly, if you’re tracking form submissions and a user submits the form, gets an error, and resubmits, you may be counting two conversions for one contact.

Go into your conversion settings and look at the Count column. For lead generation — which most service businesses do — that should be set to One. Not Every. If it’s set to Every, every repeat visit to your confirmation page or repeat form interaction gets counted. Your cost-per-conversion looks artificially low, making your campaign appear more efficient than it is.

Importing Duplicate Conversions from Multiple Sources

If you have Google Analytics goals, Google Ads conversion tags, and an imported conversion from a CRM all firing on the same action, you’re counting the same conversion multiple times. I see this constantly in accounts that multiple people have touched over the years — each one added their own tracking layer without removing or auditing the existing ones.

Open your conversion actions in Google Ads and look at how many you have listed. Now look at which ones are checked as Include in Conversions. If you have three different actions all checking the same box for what is effectively the same event, your reported conversion total is being tripled.

This is a simple audit, but it requires you to understand what each conversion action actually measures. If you can’t explain it in plain English, it probably shouldn’t be checked as a primary conversion.

Tracking Micro-Conversions as Primary Conversions

Micro-conversions are things like time on site, pages per session, or watching a video. They’re useful data points. They are not conversions in the business sense of the word.

Micro-conversions should be tracked as secondary conversions — informational data you can reference, but that Google’s algorithm doesn’t optimize toward. Your primary conversion should be the thing that actually matters to your business. A phone call. A completed form. A booking. That’s it.

Not Accounting for Offline Conversions

This one goes in the opposite direction. Rather than inflating your numbers, ignoring offline conversions can cause you to undervalue your campaign, leading you to cut budget or abandon campaigns that are actually working.

Here’s what I mean. If someone clicks your Google ad, calls your office, and books an appointment over the phone, that conversion won’t automatically appear in Google Ads. Unless you’ve closed the loop with call-tracking software and imported that data back into your account, you have no idea whether that click turned into a customer.

This is especially important for service businesses, where much of the actual conversion happens over the phone. If your campaign shows 10 conversions but you’ve actually closed 20 clients from Google Ads leads, the algorithm is operating on bad data. It thinks it’s only half as effective as it really is, which affects how it bids and who it targets.

Integrating call tracking and importing offline conversions isn’t complicated, but it does require some setup. The payoff is a much clearer picture of what your campaign is actually producing.

What to Do Right Now

Before you look at another conversion report, go into your Google Ads account and audit every single conversion action. For each one, ask yourself: what exactly is being tracked here, is it set to One for lead gen campaigns, is it duplicated anywhere else, and does it actually represent a business outcome?

If you can’t answer all four of those questions with confidence, your conversion data is suspect. And if your conversion data is suspect, every decision you’ve been making based on it — your bids, your budget, your ad copy, your landing pages — is built on a shaky foundation.

Google Ads is a powerful tool when it’s set up correctly. But it will only optimize toward what you tell it to. Tell it the wrong thing, and it will get very, very good at the wrong thing.

Make sure you’re measuring what matters. The campaign stats will follow.