Quick answer: Broken ad tracking wastes more money than bad ads. Here are ten signs, from leads that don’t match your inbox to spam counted as conversions.
Ad platforms optimise towards whatever you tell them is a conversion. If that signal is wrong, Google and Meta will very efficiently spend your money finding the wrong people. Most accounts we audit have at least one of these problems.
1. Conversions don’t match your inbox
Sign: Google Ads or Meta reports far more (or far fewer) leads than you actually received.
Check: Compare one full week: platform leads vs real enquiries. A gap of 10 to 30% can be attribution. Double, or half, is a tracking problem.
2. Conversions recorded on days with no enquiries
Sign: a conversion shows on a day your inbox was empty.
Check: Is the conversion firing on page load, a button click, or a thank-you page that can be reached without submitting?
3. A sudden drop to zero
Sign: conversions stop overnight while clicks continue.
Check: Did the website, form plugin, theme or cookie banner change? A site update often removes or breaks tracking code.
4. Conversion rate that’s too good to be true
Sign: 30% or more of clicks “convert”.
Check: You’re probably counting something easy: page views, scrolls, phone number views, or every page of a multi-step form.
5. Every form submission counts twice
Sign: conversions are roughly double your enquiries.
Check: Is the same action tracked by both GA4 imported conversions and the Google Ads tag, both set to primary? Or by both the Meta pixel and Conversions API without deduplication?
6. Spam leads counted as conversions
Sign: gibberish names, fake emails, overseas phone numbers.
Check: Add spam protection (honeypot fields, server-side checks) so bot submissions don’t fire conversion events. Spam conversions teach Smart Bidding and Meta to find more bots.
7. No call tracking
Sign: customers say “I found your ad” on the phone, but no calls show in Google Ads.
Check: Set up call assets with Google forwarding numbers and website call tracking. See getting phone calls from Google Ads.
8. Events Manager warnings
Sign: Meta Events Manager shows errors, low event match quality or “no recent activity”.
Check: Open your dataset’s Overview and Diagnostics tabs. See Meta pixel vs Conversions API.
9. Google Ads says “Unverified” or “No recent conversions”
Sign: status warnings in Goals → Conversions → Summary.
Check: Use Google Tag Assistant to load your site, submit a test form and confirm the conversion tag fires once.
10. Your marketer can’t explain what counts as a conversion
Sign: you ask “what exactly is a conversion in this account?” and the answer is vague.
Check: Ask for a list of every primary conversion action and when each fires. It should be short and specific.
How to test properly
- Open your site in a private browser window.
- Click through from a test ad link or add ?gclid=test to the URL.
- Submit a real-looking test enquiry.
- Check Google Tag Assistant, Meta Pixel Helper, GA4 DebugView and Meta’s Test Events tool.
- Confirm exactly one conversion fired per platform.
- Delete or mark your test lead in your CRM.
What to fix first
- Anything counting non-enquiries as conversions
- Duplicates
- Spam
- Missing calls
- Missing server-side tracking (Conversions API, enhanced conversions)
Then give the platforms one to two weeks to re-learn before judging performance.
Sources and further reading
Written by Gregory
20 years building websites and running lead generation, mostly with my own money on the line. Based in Sydney, working with clients worldwide. How I work →