I run a quarterly conversion tracking audit on every account I manage. Not because I expect something to be broken. Because something usually is, and nobody told me.
Last quarter alone I found three accounts with silently broken tracking. One had Enhanced Conversions wired to a form field that got renamed six weeks earlier in a theme update. One had a duplicate GTM container injected by a WordPress plugin update. One was flagging button clicks as primary conversions instead of form submits, and Smart Bidding had quietly spent 11 weeks optimising for people who nearly submitted.
None of these broke loudly. All three dashboards said "all good". That's the whole problem with conversion tracking. It fails quietly, and once Smart Bidding is involved, bad data doesn't just give you bad reports, it actively burns budget chasing the wrong people.
Here's the 10-point check I run every three months. Takes about 90 minutes per account. If you haven't done this since you set tracking up, now's a good time.
(New account from scratch? Start with the full setup guide instead and come back to the audit next quarter.)
1. Confirm Every Primary Conversion is Still Firing
Open Google Ads > Goals > Summary. Look at the "Last recorded conversion" column.
Any primary conversion with no activity in the last 7 days on an account that's been running normally is suspect. Could be low volume, could be seasonality, could be a broken tag. Verify by firing the actual conversion yourself. Fill the form. Call the number. Push the button.
I had one account where the "Book a Call" conversion hadn't fired in 11 days. Everything else looked fine. The booking tool had updated its iframe source URL and the GTM trigger listener was watching the old one.
2. Audit Primary vs Secondary Status
Google changed the UI last year so this is easy to miss now. Every conversion action has a "Goal use" setting that's either Primary (counts for bidding) or Secondary (observed only).
Walk through every single conversion action and ask: should Smart Bidding be optimising toward this?
The quick rule: one primary per real business outcome. Lead gen with form fills AND phone calls? Both can be primary if valued correctly. Form fills PLUS "newsletter signup" PLUS "video play" PLUS "scroll depth" all as primary? You've just told Google that watching 30 seconds of your explainer video is as valuable as submitting an enquiry. It isn't.
Most accounts I audit have too many primary conversions, not too few. Demote everything you're not sure about.
3. Spam / Bot Conversion Check
This one bit me on my own account recently. A vendor pitch spam form fill triggered the Submit Lead Form conversion as Primary, which meant for a moment Smart Bidding thought spam was a buying signal.
Three things to check:
- Is your form protected? Turnstile, reCAPTCHA, honeypot. Pick one and verify it still works. Plugins break silently in theme updates.
- Is your "lead form" conversion ratio sane? If you're getting 40 form submits and 2 real leads, your form is being filled by bots or SEO spam agencies pitching themselves.
- Should calendar bookings (Cal.com, Calendly) be the primary signal instead? Calendar bookings are harder to fake. If you're a service business, consider demoting the form submit to secondary and making the booking the primary.
4. Verify Enhanced Conversions is Still Mapping
Enhanced Conversions lifts measured conversions 20 to 50% on most lead gen accounts, but only if the user data mapping is still correct.
Google Ads > Goals > Conversions > the action > Enhanced Conversions tab.
Look at "Diagnostics". If any field says "no data" or "unmatched", your form fields have likely been renamed. If you're using the manual tag method with GTM variables, verify the variables still point to real DOM elements. Theme updates and form rebuilds silently break these.
A 30-second check that saves 30% of your attribution.
5. Phone Call Tracking: Real Calls vs Noise
If calls are a primary conversion, this one matters.
- Google forwarding numbers: confirm the call length threshold (default 60s) still reflects what a real conversation looks like for your business. A legal firm with 20-second "what are your fees" calls isn't tracking leads, it's tracking fishing expeditions.
- Call-only ads: verify the number in the ad is the forwarding number, not the direct line. I've seen call-only ads with the direct number, and Google can't attribute those at all.
- Call reporting: check Google Ads can actually see your call volume. If "Calls from ads" column is empty for the quarter, something's broken.
6. GA4 Imported vs Native Ads Conversions
Lots of accounts have GA4 "key events" imported into Google Ads sitting alongside native Google Ads conversions tracking the same thing. One form submit, two conversions counted.
Check the "Source" column in Goals > Summary. If you've got a Google Ads native conversion AND a GA4 imported conversion both pointing at the same user action, pick one. Native is generally more accurate for Google Ads attribution; GA4 is better if you need the full customer journey view in GA4.
Pick one, make it primary. Make the other secondary or remove it. Doubled conversions mean Smart Bidding is overvaluing those actions by 2x and underspending on everything else.
7. Attribution Model is Deliberate, Not Default
Google changed the default from Last Click to Data-Driven for most accounts in 2023. Fine for most lead gen businesses. But not every account was flipped and not every account should be.
- Data-Driven is the default now and generally the right call if you have 300+ conversions a month.
- Last Click survives only on legacy accounts and specific attribution-insensitive scenarios.
- Position-based, time decay, linear are usually overkill for a solo-funnel lead gen account.
Quick check: are all your conversion actions on the same attribution model? Mixing models across primary conversions inside the same account creates mess.
8. Check for Phantom "Imported" Conversions
Open any conversion labelled "Import" in the source column. If it says "Imported from GA4" or "Imported from Google Analytics" and you don't remember importing it, somebody did. Possibly past-you. Possibly Google in a UI update.
If it's duplicate (see #6), kill it. If it's genuinely useful (an offline conversion import for signed deals, for example), confirm it's firing.
If you want to pull in Google-click-ID-based offline conversions (closed deals, qualified leads from CRM), this is a bigger exercise and deserves its own planning session. The audit just checks what's already there is intentional.
9. Review the Last 7 Days of Conversion Volume
Open Reports > Predefined > Basic > Campaign, filter to last 7 days, add the Conversions column.
If any single primary conversion dropped more than 40% week-on-week with no corresponding drop in clicks or spend, that's a tracking signal, not a demand signal. Treat it as broken until you can prove otherwise by firing the conversion yourself.
Catching a 40% drop in week 1 is a 15-minute fix. Catching it in week 11 (my 11-week Smart Bidding example earlier) is 11 weeks of optimised-toward-garbage.
10. Document What You Found
Even if everything is fine, write "ran quarterly audit on [date], all 10 checks pass". Next quarter you'll have a before-and-after reference. In six quarters you'll have a timeline of when things broke and in what order, which is incredibly useful when the next weird thing happens.
I keep this in a running note per client, one line per quarter, flagged with anything found and what was done.
If This Felt Like a Lot
Running a tracking audit on an account you built yourself is one thing. Running one on an account you inherited, especially one that's been through 3 agencies and 2 web developers, is a different exercise.
Download the full Google Ads audit checklist for the 55-point version that covers tracking plus structure, bidding, ad copy, and the rest of the account.
Or if you'd rather someone else run it, that's what a Google Ads audit is for. I run the quarterly check on every account I manage, and the first paid audit for a new account always starts here.