The best way to track Leadpages submissions as conversions in Google Ads

Google Ads can be a strong source of new leads and customers, but getting conversion tracking right is trickier than it should be.

If you use something like Google Tag Manager, you're stuck writing custom code to catch each form submission, then setting up triggers, tags, and variables to make the whole system work.

There are easier options, but they have issues as well. Counting visits to a thank-you page loses up to 30% of conversions, thanks to ad blockers and privacy tools built into browsers like Firefox and Safari.

So what's the fix?

This article covers a more reliable way to track conversions in Google Ads when someone fills out a form built with Leadpages, using server-side tracking.

Whether you're counting thank you page views or firing events through Google Tag Manager, the standard ways of tracking Google Ads conversions all run into the same fundamental issue. They rely on the visitor's browser to send the conversion to Google Ads.

Here's why that's an issue:

• Ad Blockers. They keep the Google Tag from loading at all in the visitor's browser, so nothing that happens on your site ever gets recorded.
• Browser privacy features. Browsers like Safari cut the Google Tag off from following a visitor after roughly a day, so if someone clicks your ad today and doesn't convert until 4 days later, there's no way to connect that conversion back to the ad click.
• People switching devices. Someone might click your ad on their phone, then come back later and submit your form from a laptop. Browser tracking has no way to tie those two events together since they happen on separate devices.

That's why server-side tracking is better. Rather than waiting for something to happen (a visitor reaching a thank you page) and hoping the Google Tag is loaded and catches it, you send Google a direct, private message containing the lead's details, so ad blockers and privacy settings can't get in the way.

And the numbers show this makes a real difference. Google's own data shows server-side tracking delivers a 23% average increase in total recorded conversions and a 10% cut in cost per conversion, largely because Google's algorithms have better data to learn from and can put your ads in front of the right people.

There are two main ways to approach this, and which one fits depends on when you want the conversion to show up in Google Ads.

A tool like Converly makes it simple to send a server-side conversion to Google Ads when someone submits the form on your Leadpages landing page.

Instead of trying to configure Google Tag Manager to catch the submission, pull the lead's details out, hash them with SHA-256 and send them to Google's API, you get a clean visual builder for putting the whole flow together.

You simply choose a trigger (like a new submission on your Leadpages form) and pick the actions that should follow (like sending a conversion to Google Ads).

From there, Converly takes care of everything. It watches for new submissions, pulls the lead's name, email and phone number out of the form, hashes them with SHA-256, and sends them on to Google Ads. It also picks up the Google Click ID and other signals about how the person found you and passes those along with the conversion, which gives Google a much better shot at tying the conversion back to a real person and the campaign, ad and keyword they originally clicked.

The result is that you get every benefit of server-side tracking (the 23% average lift in recorded conversions and 10% drop in cost per conversion we mentioned earlier) without writing custom code, understanding SHA-256, or touching Google's API directly.

Since Leadpages stores every submission in its own built-in Leads area, you can hold off and send the conversion to Google Ads later in the sales cycle instead (once a lead actually becomes a paying customer, for example).

To do that, you need to capture a bit of extra data with every submission and carry it through to the contact record. Here's how:

Here's why sending server-side conversions to Google Ads is the best approach, regardless of when you choose to do it (on form submission, when a deal is created, etc).

Old-school tracking (like using Google Tag Manager to count thank you page visits) relies on scripts like the Google Tag loading in the visitor's browser, but ad blockers and privacy-first browsers often stop those scripts from loading in the first place (which means they can't track anything the visitor does on the site).

Recent research puts the share of internet users running some form of ad blocker at north of 30%, so it's not a minor issue.

But with server-side tracking you're sending the conversion straight to Google's servers, so ad blockers and privacy restrictions can't interfere, and every lead gets counted.

Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) tends to wipe tracking cookies within a day or two, so the link between an ad click and the eventual conversion disappears if the visitor doesn't submit that same day.

Server-side tracking gets around this issue too. It sends the name, email, phone, Google Click ID, etc straight to Google Ads with each lead, giving Google the data it needs to tie the conversion back to the original ad click regardless of how long the gap between click and conversion was.

Plenty of leads click your ad on one device (like their phone) but don't actually fill out your form until later (from a computer maybe).

Ordinary browser-based tracking can't connect those two visits because they happen on separate devices. But by sending information about the lead (name, email, phone, etc) straight to Google's servers, Google has the data it needs to stitch the sessions together and credit your ads properly for the role they played.

On top of that, browser-based tracking opens the door to other mistakes, particularly if you're tracking things like thank-you page visits or clicks on the submit button. Someone could mistype their email or skip a required field, but because they clicked submit, the conversion still gets sent to Google Ads. Then when they fix the error and submit again, you've counted 2 conversions for a single lead.

Server-side tracking avoids that entirely. It only logs a conversion when a submission genuinely goes through, not when a thank you page loads or a button gets clicked, so your Google Ads conversion counts stay much closer to the real number of leads you're getting.

Over my 15-year career in marketing, I've spent millions of dollars on Google Ads and built more reports than I can count trying to see what was genuinely working.

Here are the 3 I kept coming back to:

Most businesses bid on a variety of different keywords spread across several campaigns, often split by the type of work they're chasing (an architecture firm might bid on 'commercial architect' keywords in one campaign, and 'heritage renovation architect' in another).

This report shows which of those keywords are actually turning into conversions, rather than just generating impressions and clicks that never go anywhere. It makes it obvious which keywords are actually generating leads for your business and which aren't, so you know exactly where to put more budget to bring in more leads.

If you're pushing conversions back to Google Ads from your CRM, you can attach a value to each one (usually pulled from the value field on the contact or deal record).

That matters because not all customers are worth the same amount. For an architecture firm, a lead that comes through the 'heritage renovation' campaign might be worth a fraction of one sourced from the 'commercial architect' campaign.

So by sending a conversion value to Google Ads from your CRM, you can build reports that show you $1000 earned from one campaign and $10,000 from another. That makes deciding where to put your budget a lot more straightforward.

This report is especially useful for businesses that win most of their clients locally (architecture firms, law practices, financial advisors, and similar). It breaks your conversions down by geographic region.

You can keep it broad, at the country, state or city level, or drill down all the way to an individual postcode. Either way, it shows you whether your leads are genuinely coming from the areas you want to serve, or whether you're wasting budget showing your ads and generating leads from areas that you don't serve.

Once you can see that, Google Ads has a feature called Location Bid Adjustments that lets you act on it. You can tell Google to bid harder in the postcodes that pay off best, and pull back (or stop entirely) in the ones that generate impressions and clicks but never turn into leads and customers.

Setting up proper conversion tracking in Google Ads has many benefits. You get better data for your own manual decision making (like deciding which keywords or locations deserve more spend), and you give the algorithms the data they need to do automated bidding and get you more leads at a lower cost.

But none of that works if the underlying data is shaky. If you're just tracking thank-you page visits or sending conversions through the visitor's browser, then you're not getting real, accurate conversion data in Google Ads, and both you and the algorithms are going to make the wrong decisions.

The two ways presented above make it easy to set up accurate, reliable server-side tracking in Google Ads. No code, no complex configuration. So give them a try today!