Importing and Syncing GA4 Conversions to Google Ads

Gone are the days of fragile conversion tracking and ‘hacking’ Google Tag Manager to properly track your Google Ads conversions. With GA4, you can create events, set them as conversions, and import them directly into Google Ads for 1:1 conversion tracking. This article will walk you through the basics.

Setting up events in GA4

The data in GA4 comes from events that you setup on your website. Events are triggered when a user performs a specific action. Not all events will be conversions. Rather, you’ll have events for ‘page_view’, ‘button_click’, and more. However, events that are logged that are important to your business should be marked as a conversion in GA4. To do this, go to the Configure tab and toggle the switch next to the important events. Once you’ve marked these events as conversions, you’re ready to connect them to Google Ads.

Benefits of importing conversions

Importing your Google Analytics 4 conversions into Google Ads offers a few benefits:

• Access your Google Analytics conversions and data related to your Google Ads clicks
• See Google Analytics conversion data in Google Ads
• Give Google Ads Smart Bidding access to data that helps optimize bids, potentially increasing conversions and lowering costs

GA4 Conversion Events

In GA4, every user engagement event can be logged and analyzed, which includes both non-conversion and conversion activities. Defining what constitutes a conversion is crucial for accurate data reporting and analysis. Below are some general examples of conversions to consider for tracking:

• User submits a sales inquiry form
• User submits a customer support request form
• User submits a product/service feedback form
• User initiates a phone call to the business
• User makes a purchase
• User initiates a download

By carefully selecting the conversion actions to log in GA4, you can simplify your attribution process and significantly enhance the accuracy and data quality in your reports

Prerequisites

Make sure you’ve connected your GA4 account to your Google Ads account. For more information, see this help article.

Once you’ve done that, you also need to enable auto-tagging in your Google Ads account so that Google can properly match paid traffic to your conversions data.

Instructions

Step 1: Turning on conversion events in GA4

Navigate to Google Analytics and click Configure in the left sidebar.

This will take you to the events page, wherein you can view a list of all events that are being logged to Google Analytics.

Step 2: Enable Conversion Events

You can enable an event as a conversion by clicking the toggle under the Mark as conversion column.

Step 3: View Your Conversion Events

After you've chosen your conversion events, navigate to Conversions to view a list of all the conversion events you've selected.

Step 4: Link Your GA4 Property

Click to Tools and Settings

Then, click Linked Accounts

Next, click Details next to Google Analytics

Find the property you'd like to connect, and click Link

Complete the on-screen linking steps

Step 5: Import Conversion Events

Navigate to Tools and Settings

Click Conversions

Click New conversion action

Click Import

Select Google Analytics 4 Properties (Web)

Select the conversions you'd like to import

Click Import and continue

Now, your conversions will automatically log to Google Ads and be attributed directly to your campaigns.

By default, Google Ads marks your imported Google Analytics 4 conversions as "primary" conversion actions. Google Ads conversion tracking starts importing the data from your Analytics account starting from the day you clicked Import. Historical data from before this date is not added to conversion tracking.

Google Ads uses your chosen conversion window(s) (7-90 days, default: 30 days) to determine which conversion events to import from Analytics. For example, if you use the 30-day default window for a conversion event named Registrations, Google Ads only imports conversions that occurred within 30 days of the click.