Google Ads Conversion Tracking Stopped Reporting. Here's the Fix Order.

If your conversions dropped to exactly zero, the tag has almost certainly stopped firing — start on the website, not in the Google Ads interface. If they dropped partially, suspect consent, attribution windows, or import lag before assuming a fault. Work through the checks below in order; each one rules out a class of cause, and doing them out of order wastes the most time.

One rule before you start: do not change bids while tracking is broken. Smart bidding optimises against whatever data it receives, and feeding it a gap takes weeks to recover from.

First: is it zero, or is it just down?

The shape of the drop tells you where to look.

Exactly zero, starting on a specific day. The tag is not firing. Something changed on the website or in the tag container. Go to check 1.

Down 30–60%, gradually or overnight. Consent, a changed attribution window, or a segment that stopped converting. Go to check 3.

Down only on one campaign. Not a tracking fault. That campaign's landing page, targeting or budget changed.

Down since a site launch or redesign. The tag did not survive the deploy. This is the single most common cause we see, and it is check 1.

Check 1: Is the tag firing at all?

Do this before anything else, because it settles half the possibilities.

The quick way: install Google Tag Assistant, open your site, complete a test conversion — submit the form, click the WhatsApp button, whatever counts. Watch whether the conversion tag fires.

The way that always works: open your browser's developer tools, Network tab, and filter for googleads or google.com/pagead. Complete a test conversion. You should see a request go out. If you see nothing, the tag is not there.

If the tag is not firing, the cause is usually one of:

• A site deploy dropped it. Someone rebuilt a page and the snippet was not carried over.
• The thank-you page URL changed. If your conversion is a page-view of /thank-you/ and the form now redirects to /thanks/, you have a conversion action pointing at a page nobody reaches.
• A tag manager container was published without it, or the trigger was edited.
• The form no longer redirects. Many modern forms submit without a page change, so a page-view conversion never fires. You need an event-based conversion instead.

Check 2: Did the website change recently?

If check 1 showed the tag missing, this tells you why.

Ask what shipped around the date conversions stopped. A redesign, a new form plugin, a CMS update, a new privacy banner, a hosting move. Any of them can drop a tag silently, and nothing in Google Ads will warn you — the account simply reports fewer conversions and keeps spending.

This is also why conversion tracking belongs in the pre-launch checklist rather than being verified afterwards.

Check 3: Is consent blocking it?

The cause most often missed, because everything looks healthy from the outside.

If your site runs a consent banner and a visitor declines — or Consent Mode defaults ad_storage to denied and nothing ever grants it — the conversion tag is suppressed. Clicks and cost continue exactly as before. Only conversions disappear.

What to check:

• Did a consent banner get added or changed recently? The date it was installed often matches the date conversions dropped.
• Is ad_storage ever granted? A Consent Mode setup that denies by default and never updates on acceptance is a common misconfiguration.
• What proportion of visitors accept? If most decline, you are not broken — you are seeing a real, smaller number, and modelled conversions may fill part of the gap.

Worth being clear-eyed about the trade here. Cookieless analytics and no banner is a legitimate choice, but you cannot have that and full conversion tracking. Ad conversion tags set cookies. That is the same reason this site has no cookie banner and does not run ad conversion tracking on itself.

Check 4: Are you looking at an imported conversion?

Where: Goals → Conversions → Summary, and read the Source column.

Conversions imported from GA4 lag behind native Google Ads tags — commonly 24 to 48 hours, sometimes more. If you are looking at yesterday and panicking, wait a day.

Check the source before assuming a fault:

• Website (Google Ads tag): reports within about 3 hours.
• Google Analytics (GA4): 24–48 hours.
• Offline / enhanced conversions: longer still, and dependent on upload schedules.

Check 5: Is the conversion window doing this?

Where: the conversion action → Edit settings → Conversion window.

If someone shortened the click-through conversion window from 30 days to 7, conversions will appear to drop even though nothing broke. Long consideration cycles are affected most.

Attribution model changes do the same thing. Moving from last-click to data-driven redistributes credit across campaigns, so individual campaigns can show large swings while the account total barely moves. Always check the account total before diagnosing a campaign.

Check 6: Are conversions being double-counted, or was that fixed?

Double-counting inflates your numbers and hides real problems. Fixing it looks like a drop.

Watch for:

• The same action counted twice — for example both a form submission event and a thank-you page view.
• "Every" versus "One" conversion counting. For lead generation, "One" is nearly always correct. "Every" counts a page refresh as a new lead.
• Two containers on the page, each firing the same tag.

If your conversions halved and the halving looks suspiciously exact, you may have found a fix rather than a fault.

Check 7: Cross-domain and redirect problems

Two setups where clicks and conversions get disconnected:

Cross-domain. If your ad lands on example.com but the form lives on book.example.com or a third-party booking tool, the click identifier can be lost in transit. It needs explicit cross-domain configuration.

Redirects stripping the click ID. Google Ads appends a gclid parameter. If a redirect drops query parameters — a common default on force-HTTPS or www rules — the conversion can no longer be tied to a click. Test by loading your landing page with a fake ?gclid=test123 and checking the parameter survives to the final URL.

What to do once you find it

Fix the cause, then wait. Do not simultaneously change bids, budgets and targeting. You will not know which change did what.

Expect a learning period. If smart bidding ran without conversion data for a week, it needs roughly the same again to recalibrate.

Do not backfill by guessing. You cannot recover conversions that were never recorded. Note the gap in your reporting so the period is not later mistaken for a real performance collapse.

Then prevent it. Add a conversion test to your deploy checklist. Every site we ship has analytics and form tracking verified before launch, not after — it is a line item on our delivery checklist for exactly this reason.

Where to go next

If tracking is now clean and you want to know where the money is going, the Google Ads audit is the next step. If costs are the concern, why your cost per click went up.

We manage Google Ads for 20% of monthly ad spend, with a $200 minimum and the account in your name — how that works.

If your account is still reporting conversion numbers you do not believe, send it over and we will tell you which of them are real.