Accurate conversion measurement is crucial for understanding your campaign performance and optimizing your Google Ads budget effectively. When conversions aren't tracked correctly, it can impact your bidding strategies, and obscure valuable insights into which ads are driving results.
This guide will walk you through common issues that can arise with conversion measurement, and best practices to help you troubleshoot and ensure your data is accurate and reliable.
Tracking and verification issues
Why are my EEA tracking metrics suddenly dropping after updating to consent mode?
If you notice an unexpected drop in traffic or tracking data for users in the European Economic Area (EEA), you need to verify your Consent Mode v2 technical setup.
How to fix it
- Check Consent Parameters: Open Google Tag Assistant and verify that your Consent Management Platform (CMP) is correctly passing the gcs and gcd parameters.
- Inspect for cross-origins resource sharing errors: Open your browser's developer console and check for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) errors.
- Update server headers: If cross-origins resource sharing errors are present, have your web developer update your server headers to whitelist Google domains.
How do I fix domain ownership verification issues in Google Ads?
If you are receiving alerts regarding unverified domains or unverified phone numbers, you must prove ownership of your website.
How to fix it
- Option 1: Link your website to Google Search Console using an account with administrative access.
- Option 2: Deploy the Google tag globally across all landing pages on your site.
How do I fix issues with my Advertiser Identity Verification being rejected or flagged as a name mismatch?
Your identity verification may fail if there are discrepancies between your official documents and Google Ads account configurations, or if the uploaded images do not meet readability standards.
How to fix it
- Ensure strict name-matching: Verify that your government-issued ID matches the name in your billing settings exactly. If you operate under a "Doing Business As" (DBA) name, you must provide a business license that explicitly links your name to the entity. If the original account holder is deceased, you must ensure that ownership is officially transferred before beginning verification.
- Review document upload quality: Upload your ID or business documents in PDF, JPG, or PNG format. Ensure that all four corners of the document are fully visible in the image and that the text is completely clear.
- Verify your domain ownership: Prove control over your website by linking to Google Search Console or by implementing the Google Tag (gtag.js) across all landing pages.
Ad disapprovals and policy flags
How do I resolve a "Destination not crawlable" or "Malicious software" error?
These errors occur when Google’s automated bots are blocked from accessing and reviewing your landing pages.
How to fix it
- Check firewall settings: Ensure your server firewalls and security headers allow Google’s automated system checks and user-agents to crawl your site.
- Audit redirect chains: Verify that your landing page URLs do not contain broken links, redirect loops, or chains that terminate unexpectedly for bots.
- Scan third-Party plugins: Regularly audit your website's plugins and scripts. Outdated or compromised plugins can trigger false-positive "malicious software" flags, leading to immediate ad disapproval.
Learn more about Destination not crawlable.
Account setting or billing issues
What do I do if I see a warning on my account settings or billing profile?
You might encounter warnings in your settings if you attempt to change locked fields or if your documentation does not align during payment transfers.
How to fix it
- Verify your account type: Keep in mind that account types, such as Organization versus Individual, are permanently fixed when created and cannot be edited later.
- Match billing transfer profiles exactly: When requesting a payments profile account, your new Authorization to Offer (ATO) document must perfectly match the name specified on the new payments profile. Any naming discrepancies will result in your request being rejected by the verification system. Learn more about Editing your payments profile account.
Campaign alerts and reporting discrepancies
Why am I seeing a "Missing Primary Conversion" alert on my Local Goals?
Performance Max or Smart campaigns may trigger a "Missing Primary Conversion" alert—even if you have conversions set up. This happens because the system automatically generates local actions (like clicks for directions or website visits) from your linked Google Business Profile, which are locked for standard reporting.
How to fix it
- Navigate to your campaign settings.
- Use campaign-specific goal settings to manually select your preferred primary conversion actions.
- Exclude the locked local actions from your bidding strategy.
Why do my conversions line up with the day of the click instead of the day of the sale?
By default, Google Ads reports conversions based on the time of the click, not the time of the final action.
- Why it matters: This model allows you to accurately measure your return on investment (ROI) against the exact ad spend incurred at the moment of user engagement.
- Optimization Tip: Use the "Conversions" column to guide your smart bidding optimization, and use the "All conversions" column for a holistic audit of overall business performance.
Why am I seeing decimals or fractional numbers in my conversion reports?
If you see decimals (for example, 1.5 or 0.33 conversions) in your reports, your account is using a multi-touch attribution model. Instead of giving 100% of the credit to the last click, the system distributes "fractional credits" across the multiple ad interactions a user had before converting, providing a more realistic view of your customer journey.
Why is my conversion tag status innovative or unverified?
Unverified means that the conversion tracking tag associated with this conversion action has not yet fired. If you recently set up this conversion action, this may be expected since you may need to wait awhile for a user to complete a conversion on your website.
However, if you receive many conversions every hour (including unattributed conversions), then you can expect the status to update within 10 minutes. If you know you've waited long enough for conversions to be generated but the status remains “Unverified”, there’s an issue with your conversion tracking tag setup. You can:
If you have a problem with your conversion tag status, you may refer to Troubleshooting conversion measurement status.
If you have a problem with your conversion tag:
- For Google tags, download and review Google Tag Assistant.
- For Google Tag Manager, review Troubleshoot issues.
For advertisers in the European Economic Area (EEA), ensure consent mode is correctly configured to maintain data accuracy and prevent tracking gaps.
