Without call and form tracking, your numbers lie.

Why your reports lie without tracking

Without tracking, a Google Ads report shows clicks, a cost and sometimes “conversions” that aren’t conversions at all. We often see three situations. Calls aren’t counted at all, even though in many trades they are what drives sales. Forms are counted twice, or counted when someone merely opens the contact page. Or a simple click on a button is recorded as a conversion.

In each of these cases, three things break. You no longer know which campaign pays off, so you risk cutting the good one. Every change to keywords, ads or budget rests on wrong numbers: you are optimizing practically blind. And Google’s automated bidding, which learns from conversions, goes after more of whatever you count, even when it isn’t a lead. The other common mistakes are covered in our guide on why Google Ads campaigns aren’t working.

How do you track forms?

A form is tracked at the moment it is actually submitted: either when a thank-you page loads, or through an event fired on submission. The simplest route for a small business is Google Tag Manager, which Google describes as a tag management system that lets you configure and deploy tags on your website from a web interface. You don’t touch the site’s code every time something changes.

• Count the successful submission, never the opening of the contact page or the click on the button.
• For quote requests, set the count to “One” conversion per ad click.
• Test it yourself: submit a form, then check that a single conversion appears.
• Keep the form short, with one or two questions that help qualify the lead.

How do you track calls?

Google Ads offers several ways to track calls. They don’t measure the same thing, and that is the main source of confusion.

For calls from your website, Google dynamically replaces the number shown with a forwarding number, at no cost to you, and these numbers are available in Canada. Calls still ring on your usual line. A call counts as a conversion only if it lasts longer than the minimum length you set: base it on how long a real customer call lasts at your business, not a wrong number.

The method we use most often goes one step further: a dedicated tracking number, provided by a specialized service and forwarded to your usual line. Each call is tied to the source that generated it, then sent to Google Ads: these are the imported calls in the table.

How do you get to the qualified lead?

Not all leads are equal. Once calls and forms are tracked, the next step is to tell Google which ones turned into real prospects, or into sales. That is offline conversion import: your CRM sends the outcome of each lead back to Google Ads.

There are two methods. The older one uses the GCLID, the unique identifier Google adds to a click on an ad; your form keeps it with the lead. The newer one, enhanced conversions for leads, uses data the person provided, such as their email address, sent in hashed form to find the original campaign. Since June 15, 2026, Google has been moving these imports to a new application programming interface (the Data Manager API): a technical detail, but worth checking if your CRM was already sending this data.

The payoff is concrete: instead of learning to get any lead at all, bidding learns to get the ones that become customers.

Cookies, consent and Quebec law

Tracking relies on cookies and tags, and Quebec’s private-sector privacy law governs these technologies. When you collect information using technology that can identify, locate or profile a person, you must inform them beforehand and tell them how to activate those functions (s. 8.1). The Commission d’accès à l’information, Quebec’s privacy regulator, specifies that these functions cannot be turned on by default: the person must be able to do it themselves. In practice, that means a clear cookie banner that lets visitors choose.

Google’s consent mode then passes that choice on to Google tags, which adjust their behaviour accordingly. On kasvu.ca, every page has a cookie banner, and the tags respect the visitor’s choice. Your tracking needs to account for this in the same way; your lawyer or the person in charge of privacy at your business can review your wording.

The same care applies to calls. Google can analyze call recordings to spot quality leads, a feature limited to calls between Canada and the United States, and one you can turn off. If your calls are recorded, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada asks that you tell customers the call is being recorded, explain clearly why, and ask for their consent.

What a business owner should be able to read

Good tracking comes down to a few numbers, per campaign and per month: the number of leads (calls and forms), the cost per lead, and the share of leads that were qualified. The rest is for the team managing the campaigns. Our guide to reading a Google Ads report explains which numbers to look at first, and our Google Ads guide for small businesses shows where tracking fits in the overall approach.

At Kasvu, tracking runs through Google Tag Manager and a trackable number, and every client sees their leads, spend and cost per lead in real time in their portal. It is the foundation of our advertising campaigns, before the first ad even runs.

Your checklist

• Each primary conversion action matches a real lead.
• Forms are counted on successful submission, once per click.
• Calls from ads and from your website are tracked, with a realistic minimum length.
• Clicks on your number on mobile aren’t mistaken for calls.
• The GCLID or the email address follows the lead all the way to your CRM.
• The cookie banner informs visitors and passes their choice on to the tags.
• You tested every conversion yourself before launch.