Independent Google Ads conversion tracking audits

Is your ad budget buying customers, or just visitors?

Google Ads can optimise for the wrong thing when conversion measurement points it at the wrong outcome. We independently check whether your website is measuring real leads, calls and sales, without touching your campaigns.

Request a free conversion check See what we check →

No account access required · Human-reviewed

What we check

The measurement behind your conversion data. Forms, calls, attribution, and the landing experience you already paid for.

What we don't

Campaign management. No bidding, no keywords, no ad copy. Only the numbers those decisions rest on.

Who runs it

Jose Tabbada. Independent specialist, not a campaign-management agency.

The two ways it goes wrong

Your conversion numbers can be wrong in both directions.

A visitor gets counted as a customer

Your reports can look better than the business actually did.

Conversions but no leads →02

A real enquiry never gets linked to the ad

Campaigns that are producing customers can look like they are not.

Conversions not tracking →03

Your systems disagree about what happened

Google Ads, analytics and your own records tell different stories.

Numbers not matching →

We check for all three independently, and tell you plainly which of them could not be settled from outside your account.

What is Google actually buying with your money?

Google doesn't know what a customer is. It knows what you told it a customer is. Point that instruction at the wrong action, such as a page view, a click, or a thank-you page anyone can reach, and it will go and buy more of exactly that, using your budget, faithfully.

A failing campaign and a badly measured campaign look identical in a report. That is the whole problem.

ConsequenceYou could be paying for visitors that were counted as customers.

Which of your best campaigns look like your worst?

The expensive failure is the invisible one. Real enquiries arrive, real customers get won, but nothing connects them back to the ad that paid for them. So profitable campaigns look unprofitable, and get cut.

Overcounting spends money on the wrong people. Undercounting switches off the campaigns that were working.

ConsequenceYou could be turning off the ads that were actually paying for themselves.

And it gets more confident every day.

A bad number in a report is a one-off mistake. A bad number feeding Smart Bidding is an instruction that repeats. It runs at every auction, every day, spending real money to find more people who look like the ones it wrongly called a win.

The other two failures sit still. This one compounds while you watch the dashboard approve of it.

ConsequenceYour budget could be actively optimising toward the wrong people.

The difference it makes

Everything you spend from here depends on it.

A business owner working alone at a desk at night, seen from behind, with blind shadows fragmenting the light across the room — Before Deciding on numbers nobody has independently checked.

The same person standing calmly at a window in clean morning daylight, holding a single printed page in an ordered room — After Deciding on numbers you know the limits of.

We don't manage your ads, so we're not grading our own work.

Most Google Ads audits start inside the account. This one starts after the click: at the website, the enquiry, and the measurement that connects them back to the ad. It stays useful even when a capable agency is already in place, because they are judged by the same numbers we're checking.

If someone already manages your ads

Already working with a Google Ads agency? That is fine.

This does not replace campaign management, and it is not a pitch to take the account over. What it does is independently verify the measurement your agency, your marketing team and your board are all relying on when they judge performance.

A capable agency usually welcomes it. They are judged by the same numbers, so a scoreboard somebody independent has checked is easier to be measured against than one nobody has. And if the measurement turns out to be sound, that is a useful result too, written down.

Do you need an independent audit? →

No campaigns are paused, changed or touched.
No keywords, bids or ad copy are reviewed.
The free check needs no account access at all.
Findings describe the current state, and do not assign blame.

What can actually be proven from outside?

Less than most audit tools imply. So the review is explicit about both halves: what public inspection genuinely establishes, and what it cannot touch without your authorisation.

The limits are published, not buried. It is usually the most useful section of any report we send.

Observable from outside

Whether paid-click attribution reaches and survives on the site
Whether analytics and tag infrastructure are present
When conversion requests are sent, and after which actions
How enquiry forms behave
Whether phone enquiries appear to be measured
Landing-page speed on mobile

Requires your authorisation

Whether a conversion is Primary or Secondary
What your campaigns are actually bidding toward
Whether server-side measurement exists behind the scenes
How conversions reconcile against real sales
What your CRM received, and when
Whether the numbers in your reports match reality

What does a finding actually look like?

This one is real. It is an external check of a business that was never a client, and the timing below was measured rather than estimated.

A conversion appeared to be recorded 2.3 seconds after someone arrived

Observed externally

Business type: Consumer business
Region: New Zealand
Access: External check only. No account access.
Basis: Network requests observed during an ordinary page visit

What the check saw

A Google Ads conversion request appeared 2.3 seconds after the homepage started loading. Nothing had been submitted, no enquiry had been made, and no meaningful customer action had occurred.
The same site also had a separate conversion event visibly connected to its enquiry form.

In plain terms Google received a success signal before the visitor had actually done anything.

Why it matters commercially

The second observation is why this matters. Something was installed and working, so "is conversion tracking set up?" is the wrong question. The question is what is being counted. If an ordinary page visit can produce a conversion, the number in the report stops meaning what most people assume it means.

What we would verify next

What that conversion action represents, whether it is included in the headline performance numbers, whether campaigns are being optimised toward it, and whether it should instead occur after an enquiry, purchase or booking.

Technical detail

A conversion request was observed on the initial page view, ahead of any form submission or interaction event. The public check can confirm the request occurred and when. It cannot see whether that conversion action is set as primary, or whether any campaign uses it as a bidding goal, because both live in the account.

A real finding from an independent external check, anonymised. The business was not a client of Ads Conversion Audit, no account access was used, and nothing is concluded beyond what the check could observe.

Every finding is built the same way: what was seen, what it means in plain terms, what it might mean commercially, and the specific question that needs account access to settle.

What the check saw

Behaviour observable from outside the account, recorded exactly as found.

In plain terms

The same observation, in language that does not require any technical knowledge.

Why it matters commercially

What it could mean for the business, stated conditionally and never as a conclusion.

What we would verify next

What cannot responsibly be determined without seeing the real configuration.

See a full sample report See all four findings →

Start with the free check.

A short review of what your budget appears to be optimising toward, based on what can be established from outside your account. Written in plain commercial language, not tag syntax.

Human-reviewed results, usually within one business day.

Our diagnostic technology performs the initial checks, but findings are reviewed before they're sent so that publicly observable evidence isn't presented as something it cannot prove.

Before you ask

What is an ads conversion audit?

It is an independent check on the measurement your Google Ads decisions rest on. Not the campaigns, the keywords or the ad copy, but the question of whether the conversions being reported correspond to real customer actions.

The reason it matters is that a campaign that is failing and a campaign that is merely being measured badly look identical in a report. Until the measurement has been checked, there is no way to tell which one you are looking at.

Do you need access to my Google Ads account?

Not for the free check. That is based on publicly observable evidence only: what your website does when someone arrives from a paid click, which is visible to anyone who visits it.

The authorised audit does need read access, and that is precisely the difference between the two. Public inspection can identify what deserves investigation. Only the actual configuration can settle it.

How much does it cost?

The Free Ads Conversion Check is free, and there is no call required to get it.

The authorised audit is quoted, because the work depends on how the measurement is actually put together: how many conversion actions exist, whether a tag manager is involved, and whether a CRM sits behind the form. The free check shows both of us what is worth quoting for.

The fee is not contingent on finding faults. An audit that concludes the measurement is sound is a legitimate result and is charged the same.

How long does the free check take?

Human-reviewed results, usually within one business day.

Our diagnostic technology performs the initial checks, but findings are reviewed before they're sent so that publicly observable evidence isn't presented as something it cannot prove.

Do you manage Google Ads campaigns?

No, and that is deliberate. Not managing campaigns is what makes the review worth having: there is no account being graded here that we also built.

It is why the check stays useful when a capable agency or an internal team is already in place. They are judged by the same numbers this review examines, so nobody in that arrangement has a reason to go looking for faults in them.