How to Set Up Your Google Ads Conversion Tracking Tag

For this step, you’ll need someone who can either add some code to your side, or can access and publish in your sites’ Google Tag Manager.

To set up website conversion tracking for the first time, you'll need to add two code snippets to your website: the global site tag and the event snippet. 1. The global site tag:

  • sets new cookies on your domain, which will store information about the ad click that brought someone to your site
  • adds website visitors to your 'All visitors' remarketing lists (if you've set up remarketing) You need to install the global site tag on every page of your website, but you only need one global site tag for each Google Ads account.

2 . The event snippet tracks actions that should be counted as conversions. Install this snippet on site pages where you'd like to track conversions. Each conversion action has its own associated event snippet.

Choose from two ways to install your tag.

brillea tip: Use Google Tag Manager! If you’re not already using Google Tag Manager, we suggest installing this because it makes managing, adding and removing tags much easier! Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily update tags and code snippets on your website. You can use Google Tag Manager to install your conversion tracking tag.

Option 1: Install the conversion tracking tag with Google Tag Manager

Instead of manually adding the conversion tracking tag to your website code, you can use Google Tag Manager to install the tag.

  1. Copy the Conversion ID and Conversion label for your conversion action. (These are what you would have created in Step 1!)

  2. Follow the instructions to set up Google Ads conversion tracking in Google Tag Manager. Important: To ensure proper tracking in all browsers, make sure that you add a Conversion linker tag and configure it to fire on all of your web pages.

  3. Click Next.

  4. Click Done.

Option 2: Install the tag yourself

  1. Under 'Global site tag', select the option that best describes your situation and follow the instructions for installing the tag:

  • I haven’t installed the global site tag on my website: Choose this option if it’s your first time setting up the tag for a conversion action in your account and you haven’t installed the global site tag from another Google product. This option shows the full global site tag. To install the tag, copy the tag code and paste it between the <head></head> tags of every page of your website.

  • I installed the global site tag on my website from another Google product (e.g. Google Analytics) or from another Google Ads account: If this option applies to you, you won’t need to add the global site tag to your website again; however, for conversion tracking to work for this account, you’ll need to add the config command (the piece of code that contains your conversion ID) to every instance of the global site tag. This option shows that command, where 'AW-CONVERSION_ID' stands for your account’s conversion ID: gtag('config', 'AW-CONVERSION_ID'); Add the config command to every instance of the global site tag on your website, right above the </script> end tag.

  • I already installed the global site tag on my website when I created another conversion action in this Google Ads account: If this option applies to you, you don’t need to add the global site tag again to your website. Just make sure that the global site tag appears on every page of your site and confirm that the config command in each instance of the tag contains your account’s conversion ID. You’ll see your conversion ID when you select this option.

  1. Copy the global site tag, then follow the instructions in this link to add it to your website.

  2. Next to 'Event snippet', select whether to track conversions on a page load or click.

  • Page load: Count conversions when customers visit the conversion page, such as a confirmation page for a purchase or sign-up. This is the default and most common option.
  • Click: Count conversions when customers click a button or link (such as a 'Buy Now' button).
  1. Copy the event snippet, then follow the instructions to add it to your website, or click Download snippet to add it later.
  • If you're tracking conversions by page load, add the event snippet to the page that you're tracking.
  • If you’re tracking conversions by click, add the event snippet to the page that has the button or link that you’d like to track for clicks.

  1. Click Next.

  2. Click Done.

  3. If you’re tracking clicks on your website as conversions, follow these instructions to add an additional piece of code to the button or link that you’d like to track. This step is required for conversion tracking to work.

Note: Note that your Google Ads conversion tracking tag will be able to use this click information to attribute a conversion to your Google Ads campaigns. Please ensure that you're providing users with clear and comprehensive information about data collection, and obtaining consent where legally required.