GA4 Conversion Tracking

GA4 conversion tracking starts in Google Analytics 4, not in Google Ads. GA4 collects events, which are single user actions such as page_view, scroll, or generate_lead. You choose the events that matter to the business and mark them as key events on the Key events page in Admin. Any event that is being collected can become a key event. A key event shows up in Analytics reports. To use it for advertising, you link a Google Ads account and create a Google Ads conversion from the key event. Events themselves come from the Google tag or Google Tag Manager on your site. GA4 can record some events automatically, and others you send yourself, such as a form submission or a phone click, with their own names and parameters.

The naming trips people up. Google now calls the events that measure important actions key events. The word conversion in Analytics now refers to a key event that has been shared with Google Ads, so counts match across the two products. Google Ads still uses conversions for actions that measure campaign performance and inform bidding. Conversions created from key events appear in the Advertising section of Analytics, in the Conversion performance report, and not in the standard Reports or Explore sections. Because Analytics and Google Ads are separate products, an import creates a new conversion action in Google Ads, built from the key event. It does not move your old history, and Google notes that data from before the import is not included.

Linking decides what you can do. You need a linked Google Ads account, and Google notes you can create one web and one app conversion per key event in each linked Ads account. Imported conversions can then feed bidding such as Maximize conversions or Target CPA. The feature is not available for subproperties or roll-up properties. Attribution settings in GA4 and the conversion windows in Google Ads are separate, so the same sale can be counted at different times or credited to different channels in each product. Counting method matters. Google suggests counting every occurrence for sales, where one visitor can buy twice, and one occurrence for leads, where a second form fill from the same click is usually the same person asking again.

The classic mistake is double counting. If you have a native Google Ads conversion action for purchases and also import the matching GA4 key event, both can sit in the Conversions column and both can be used for bidding. Your reported conversions double, cost per conversion halves, and Smart Bidding learns from inflated data. Other mistakes: marking every event as a key event, so the signal is noise, and importing an event that fires on page load rather than on the real outcome, such as a thank-you page that can be revisited. Another frequent error is importing a key event that fires on page load of a thank-you page. Anyone who reloads or revisits that page adds another conversion, so fire the event on the real action instead.

In reporting, compare GA4 and Google Ads counts for the same date range but expect gaps, because attribution models, windows, and counting differ. This week, list every conversion action in Google Ads, mark the ones that duplicate each other, and make only one of each pair primary for bidding. Check that each key event matches a true business outcome, like a submitted quote form or a completed purchase, and that its counting method suits it: every for sales, one for leads. Allow time for new links and imports to appear. Newly created events may need to fire before they show in the Events list, and a freshly created conversion can take a day to report.