Tracking · Hidden leads

They were getting leads the whole time. Nobody was counting them.

When Google Ads shows zero leads, most people blame the ads. Sometimes the ads are fine. The leads just never get counted.

Two clients: an IT services company and a stone countertop company.

Story 1: IT services company

~28

real form leads in 3 months that Google Ads showed as zero

About 9 a month, landing in the company's inbox the whole time.

On paper, the ads looked like a waste of money. Zero results. But the leads were right there in the website's form entries.

Why? The form says thanks on the same page. It never loads a "thank you" page, and that's what Google was waiting for. Part of the tracking was also pointed at the wrong Google Ads account. On July 14 I connected the forms to Google properly. Now every lead shows up.

Story 2: stone countertop company

People kept clicking "Contact" on the site. But the actions that count those clicks in Google Ads had been removed. The site kept sending the signal. Google just ignored it.

I turned them back on June 19.

"Contact" clicks counted per month

56June*

126July

113August

*June only counts from the 19th, when I turned the tracking back on.

Call taps on their Google listing also went up 31% the next month (348 to 457). To be fair, a big anniversary sale ran at the same time, so I don't give the fix all the credit.

What it meant for the business

Decisions about the ads now get made on real leads, not on a zero that was never true.
Google's bidding learns from what gets counted. Now it learns from real leads, so it can go find more of them.
Both owners can finally see what their ad money brings in.

Before you cut an ad that "isn't working", check that someone is counting.

Google Ads Google Tag Manager Google Analytics 4 Form & click tracking

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