How to test Google Ads conversion tracking (and tell if it's working)

Start with the status in Google Ads

In Google Ads, open the Goals menu, click Summary and look at the status next to each conversion action. Click a status to see its alerts, then View details or View all issues for the full list. Google's current help lists five statuses:

• Active: everything is working as intended.
• Needs attention: conversions are still recording, but there are issues to fix.
• Misconfigured: conversions have stopped recording entirely because of a setup error or a broken tag.
• Awaiting conversions: nothing recorded in the last 7 days. Usually the action was created less than 48 hours ago, the campaigns are paused, or the site doesn't get enough traffic yet.
• Removed: the action was deleted or archived and no longer tracks data.
• Some Google pages, including the Tag Assistant guide below, still use older labels: Unverified, Tag inactive, No recent conversions and Recording. Google says Unverified or Inactive is normal for a new tag, and it turns Active after the first conversion or a successful test event.

How to test Google Ads conversion tracking with Tag Assistant

Google's own test starts from inside Google Ads. It watches the tag during a normal visit to your site, so there's no need to click one of your ads.

• If you use Google Tag Manager, enable your container for debugging first: in the Tag Assistant window, choose Debug live version.
• Go to Goals, then Summary, and show all conversion actions. Hover over an action marked Unverified, Tag inactive or Needs attention, select Troubleshoot, then Continue.
• Enter a landing page or your home page, not the conversion page, and select Connect. Your site opens in a new tab. Leave the Tag Assistant window and the summary table open.
• Do what a customer does until the conversion happens, then select Finish on the Tag Assistant badge. For a purchase action that means placing a real order, which you can cancel and refund afterwards. The conversion it records still counts in your reports. If Tag Assistant missed a conversion you triggered, choose I thought I already triggered it to see failed results with fix suggestions.
• The results page lists the action you tested and any others that were verified. Select Close Tag Assistant to go back.
• Verified actions update in your account after about 30 minutes. They show no recent conversions until real conversions arrive, then switch to Recording.

Look at the conversion hit itself

You can also open tagassistant.google.com directly. It's the faster way to see exactly what the tag sent.

• Click Add domain, enter your store URL starting with https://, and click Connect. Tag Assistant adds a _dbg parameter to the URL. If that breaks the page, edit the domain and turn off Include debug signal in the URL.
• Trigger the conversion, then select your Google Ads tag (it starts with AW-) in the summary pane. Open the Hits tab for the conversion event and expand the request.
• Check send_to. It carries your conversion ID and label, and Google says the label in your tag has to match the label on the conversion action in Google Ads.
• Check value, currency and transaction_id. Google's sample snippet uses 0.0 and USD as placeholders. If every hit still carries those exact values, the tag probably isn't reading your order data.
• The Tag Assistant Chrome extension is recommended, not required. You need it to debug tags inside iframes, and it handles pop-ups and new tabs better. The old Tag Assistant Legacy and Tag Assistant Companion extensions have been combined into one Tag Assistant extension. Companion still works but is being deprecated.

Make sure each order counts once

A transaction ID is a unique ID for each order. If one conversion action receives two conversions with the same ID, Google Ads ignores the second. That covers customers who reload or come back to the thank-you page.

• Send the real order ID in transaction_id. A fixed value such as 1234 or thank_you, a price or a currency code doesn't work, and a reused ID makes Google Ads undercount.
• To test it, make two test purchases and check that each conversion hit carries a different ID that's never empty or undefined.
• A transaction ID doesn't remove duplicate view-through conversions.
• Make sure a page doesn't load more than one Google tag or Tag Manager container. Google lists that as a common cause of tagging problems.

Google Ads conversion tracking not working: where to look next

• Tag Diagnostics: in your Google tag settings, under Tag quality, select View diagnostics. The tag is rated Excellent, Good, Needs attention, Urgent or No recent data, with fixes for issues like a missing conversion linker, a tag placed too low on the page, or a Content Security Policy blocking it.
• Tag coverage: go to Data manager in the Tools menu, click Manage on your Google tag, then open Tag coverage. Pages are listed as Tagged, No recent activity or Not tagged. After changing domains, thank-you page URLs or redirects, check that every new URL has the Google tag.
• Google Tag Manager: the conversion linker tag should fire on every page people may land on after clicking an ad. If a Misconfigured action was created automatically, it can't be mapped to a Tag Manager conversion tag, so create one manually to get a conversion ID and label.
• Ad blockers and consent: turn off your ad blocker for your store while testing, and set your consent tool to allow Google's consent API.
• Enhanced conversions adds hashed (SHA256) customer data such as email addresses to the conversion. If you use it, the Diagnostics tab on the Goals summary page shows its coverage and match rate.
• If your purchase conversion is imported from Google Analytics rather than sent by the Google Ads tag, the problem may sit on the GA4 side. Our GA4 audit checklist walks through it.
• Give a fix time. Google allows 24 to 48 hours for diagnostics and status to update, and says alerts can be false positives on very low traffic.

Google Ads conversion tracking on Shopify

• Shopify connects Google Ads through the Google & YouTube channel: Sales channels > Google & YouTube, then Get started in the Just want to set up Google Ads conversion measurement? banner. The Google account you connect must be an administrator on the Google Ads account.
• Google says Shopify includes transaction IDs automatically when conversions come through the Google & YouTube app.
• Shopify warns that leftover code in Additional scripts or checkout.liquid can track the same event more than once. In your browser's developer tools, look for more than one request to the same endpoint for a single event.

What one test can't tell you

• A passing test shows the tag fired once, in your browser, on the path you took. Other pages, devices and cookie banner choices can still behave differently.
• Google says conversions are reported against the date of the ad click, and some happen days after it, so recent numbers keep moving. Google also says reporting can take 3 to 24 hours to update.
• Google says offline conversion imports take 24 to 48 hours to process. They never pass through the browser, so Tag Assistant doesn't see them.
• Pixel Audit runs the browser part of the check from our servers: it opens your store, goes through home, product, cart and checkout, and reports what the Google Ads tag and seven other tags sent along the way. It doesn't place an order, so it can't see the purchase conversion, server-side events or offline uploads. The problem list is free.