Setting Up Conversion Tracking: A No-BS Guide

Only 22% of home service businesses track conversions beyond pageviews. The rest are running Google Ads, spending $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 a month, and have no idea which clicks turn into jobs.

When you don’t track conversions, Google’s algorithm optimizes for clicks. It finds people who click ads. That’s what you told it to do.

When you do track conversions, Google optimizes for conversions. It finds people who look like your past customers. The same budget produces more leads because the algorithm actually knows what success looks like.

One plumbing contractor saw cost per lead drop from $187 to $112 after setting up conversion tracking properly. Same budget, 40% more leads, just from giving Google better data.

What counts as a conversion

A conversion is any action that indicates a potential customer. For contractors, that means:

Phone calls. Someone calls your business. This is 65% of your leads but the hardest to track.

Form submissions. Someone fills out your contact form, quote request, or scheduling form.

Chat messages. If you have live chat, someone starting a conversation is a conversion.

Email clicks. Someone clicks your email link from your website.

Pageviews are not conversions. Time on site is not a conversion. Scrolling is not a conversion. These metrics feel good but they don’t book jobs.

Tracking form submissions

Form submissions are the easiest conversion to track. The visitor does something visible on your website and you can detect it.

Thank-you page method

Most contact forms redirect to a thank-you page after submission. The URL might be /thank-you or /contact-success or /form-submitted.

In Google Ads, go to Goals > Conversions > New conversion action. Choose “Website.” Enter your website URL.

Select “Page views” as the action and enter the URL of your thank-you page. Google will track every time someone lands on that page as a conversion.

Simple, reliable, works with almost any form.

Google Tag Manager method

If your forms don’t redirect (they show a success message on the same page), you need Google Tag Manager.

Install GTM on your site. Create a trigger that fires when the form submits. The specifics depend on your form:

Contact Form 7 on WordPress fires a custom event called “wpcf7mailsent.” Create a trigger watching for that event.

Gravity Forms fires “gform_confirmation_loaded” when submissions complete.

Generic forms often change the page DOM when the success message appears. You can trigger on element visibility.

Once your trigger fires correctly, create a Google Ads Conversion Linker tag and a Google Ads Conversion Tracking tag. Connect them to your trigger. Publish.

This takes an hour to set up properly, but it works for forms that don’t redirect.

Tracking phone calls

Phone calls are where most contractors fail at tracking. The visitor picks up their phone and calls. Nothing happens on your website to detect.

Track click-to-call

When someone taps your phone number on mobile, that’s a click event you can track.

In Google Tag Manager, create a trigger for “Click - Just Links” where the Click URL contains “tel:” (the format phone links use).

Create a Google Ads conversion tag that fires on this trigger. Now you’re tracking every mobile tap on your phone number.

The limitation: you’re tracking clicks, not calls. Someone might tap by accident, or tap and hang up before connecting. Click-to-call tracking overcounts actual conversations by roughly 15-20%.

Still better than nothing. Way better than nothing.

Call tracking software

For real phone tracking, you need call tracking software. CallRail, CallTrackingMetrics, WhatConverts, and similar tools provide dynamic number insertion.

How it works: the software gives you tracking numbers. When someone visits from Google Ads, they see one number. When someone visits from organic search, they see a different number. When someone visits from Facebook, they see a third.

Whoever calls, you know exactly which channel drove them. The software logs the call, records it (if you want), and sends the conversion data to Google Ads automatically.

Costs $45-100/month for most small businesses. Expensive? Think about it differently. If you’re spending $3,000/month on ads and 60% of your leads are calls, you’re flying blind on $1,800 worth of spend. One properly attributed job more than pays for a year of call tracking.

Google Ads call extensions

If you’re not ready for call tracking software, at minimum enable call extensions in Google Ads. Google will show a click-to-call button directly in your ad.

Calls from the extension are automatically tracked as conversions. You won’t know what the caller said, but you’ll know Google Ads drove a phone call.

Go to Ads & extensions > Extensions > Call extension. Add your phone number. Google handles the rest.

Connecting GA4 conversions to Google Ads

If you’ve already set up conversion events in Google Analytics 4, you can import them directly into Google Ads instead of setting up duplicate tracking.

In Google Ads, go to Goals > Conversions > Import. Select “Google Analytics 4 properties” and link your account if you haven’t already.

Choose the events you want to import as conversions: form_submit, phone_click, whatever you’ve configured.

Advantage: one source of truth. Your GA4 data and Google Ads data match because they’re the same data.

Disadvantage: GA4 uses different attribution than Google Ads native tracking. Google Ads will sometimes report slightly different numbers. For most contractors, this doesn’t matter.

Conversion values

By default, each conversion counts as 1. Ten form submissions equals 10 conversions.

But not all leads are equal. A water heater replacement quote request is worth more than a faucet repair question.

You can assign values to conversions. If your average water heater job is $2,500 and you close 20% of leads, each water heater lead is worth $500 on average.

In Google Ads conversion settings, set the value to $500 for water heater form submissions. Set maybe $100 for general contact form submissions.

Now Google’s algorithm knows to prioritize high-value leads. It’ll bid more aggressively for searches like “water heater replacement” and less for “leaky faucet.”

This gets complicated fast. Start with equal values and add sophistication once you have baseline data.

Testing your setup

Before you trust your conversion data, test it.

Submit your own contact form. Did the conversion fire?

Click your phone number on mobile. Did the conversion fire?

Check Google Ads under Goals > Conversions. You should see recent conversions within a few hours.

Check Google Tag Manager’s preview mode. It shows exactly which tags fire on which actions. If something’s broken, you’ll see why.

Common problems: wrong thank-you page URL, Tag Manager container not published, conversion action still in “No recent conversions” status (takes up to 24 hours to start tracking).

Conversion windows and counting

Two settings in Google Ads that matter:

Conversion window: How long after a click do you count conversions? Default is 30 days. If someone clicks today and submits a form in 45 days, should that count?

For emergency services (AC broken, pipe burst), use 7-14 days. People don’t wait a month when their heat is out.

For considered purchases (HVAC replacement, roof install), use 30-60 days. These decisions take time.

Counting: Count “one” conversion per click, or “every” conversion? For leads, use “one.” You don’t want a single person submitting the form three times to count as three leads.

For purchases (if you’re selling parts or products), use “every.” Three purchases from one click means three sales.

Enhanced conversions

Browser privacy changes killed part of conversion tracking. Safari limits cookies. iOS users opt out. Chrome is phasing out third-party cookies.

Enhanced conversions recover some lost data. When someone submits a form, you send hashed (one-way encrypted) email or phone data to Google. Google matches it against signed-in users.

You’re not sharing personal data. You’re sending a scrambled code that only matches if Google already has the same user in their system.

Setup requires Google Tag Manager and some technical configuration. Google’s documentation walks through it. The payoff is 15-30% more conversions attributed, which means smarter bidding.

What good conversion tracking looks like

After setup, your Google Ads account should show:

• Conversions column with real numbers, not zeros
• Cost per conversion (what you actually pay per lead)
• Conversion rate (what percentage of clicks convert)

You can now make decisions like: Campaign A produces leads at $95 each, Campaign B at $180 each. Shift budget to Campaign A.

Or: Mobile traffic converts at 2.1%, desktop at 4.8%. Something’s wrong with the mobile experience.

Or: “Water heater” keywords convert at 6%, “plumbing repair” keywords convert at 1.5%. Bid higher on water heaters.

Without conversion tracking, you’re making none of these decisions. You’re just looking at clicks and hoping.

Beyond conversion tracking

Conversion tracking tells you when someone becomes a lead. It doesn’t tell you which leads become customers.

Someone submits a form. That’s a conversion. But did they book a job? Did they spend $500 or $15,000?

Marketing attribution connects online leads to offline revenue. First-party data strategy ensures you’re building assets instead of just renting traffic.

Start with conversion tracking. Get the basics right. Once you’re confident in your lead numbers, layer on the more sophisticated tracking.

The contractors who know their numbers make better decisions than those who guess. And the ones who actually track conversions instead of just pageviews see their ad performance improve month over month as the algorithms learn what works.