Google Ads conversions stopped tracking: find the break and fix it

What this means

Your main conversion action has recorded nothing for several days in a row. A conversion action is what Google Ads counts as a result, usually a purchase. The main one is set to Primary, and Primary actions are the ones used for bidding. Before the gap, it recorded sales on a steady rhythm.

When a store keeps selling but Google Ads sees zero, the link between your store and Google Ads is broken. These are the usual causes:

• A site change. A new theme, a checkout edit, an app update, or an edit in Google Tag Manager (a tool that loads your tags) can drop the tag.
• Shopify's Thank you page upgrade. Shopify says August 26, 2026 was the deadline for stores on non-Plus plans to move to the new Thank you and Order status pages. On upgrade, existing customizations on those pages are replaced. A purchase tag pasted into Additional scripts stops with them.
• The Google & YouTube app. When this Shopify app is linked, it creates your purchase conversion action automatically. If it's disconnected or linked to another Google Ads account, sales stop reaching yours.
• A cookie banner update. Consent mode adapts how Google tags behave when a visitor says no to cookies. A banner set up wrong can block the tag for far more people than it should.
• Auto-tagging off, or a redirect. Auto-tagging adds a click ID called GCLID to your ad links. Google says the GCLID must reach the final landing page to track conversions.
• A broken Google Analytics link. If your purchase is imported from Google Analytics, Google requires the 2 accounts to be linked.

Why it costs you money

The damage keeps growing for as long as nobody notices.

• Smart Bidding goes blind. Smart Bidding is Google's automatic bidding. Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value are all Smart Bidding strategies, and they use your conversion data to meet your goals. With no sales coming in, bids drop, or spend drifts to traffic that looks cheap but doesn't sell.
• The damage outlasts the fix. The empty days stay in the bidding history. Google says that if a week or more of clicks are impacted, performance fluctuations may persist for 1-2 conversion cycles. A conversion cycle is your usual time from ad click to sale.
• Your reports lie. Return on ad spend (ROAS, sales value per $1 of ads) shows near zero, so campaigns that work look like failures. Check what yours should be with the ROAS calculator.

Here's a worked example. A store spends $120 a day on the campaigns that bid on its purchase action. The last sale recorded on October 6, and the owner spots the gap on October 13. That's 7 days at $120, so $840 spent with no feedback. The store's own orders from Google ads ran at about 5 a day the whole time, so the sales were real and the tag was broken. After the fix, compare the 2 weeks after with the 2 weeks before the outage to see the recovery cost.

How to check your account in 2 minutes

1. Go to Summary in the Goals menu and choose All conversions from the Conversions drop-down, as Google's Tag Assistant guide shows.
2. Read the Status column for your purchase action. Google now shows 5 statuses. Hover over the status to see Google's steps.
   • Misconfigured: conversions have stopped recording entirely due to a setup error or a broken tag.
   • Awaiting conversions: none in the last 7 days.
   • Needs attention: there's something to fix, but recording hasn't stopped.
   • Active: it's working.
   • Older names: some help pages still use them. There, No recent conversions isn't always a tracking error, and Inactive often points to tag misconfiguration.
3. Open Campaigns and set the date range to the last 14 days. Click the segment icon and choose Day under Time. Google only allows the Day segment for date ranges of 16 days or less. The Conversions column counts Primary actions, so you'll see the day your sales drop to 0. To split by action, choose Conversion action under Conversions instead.
4. Add the Conversions (by conv. time) column. The standard column credits a sale to the date your ad was clicked. The by conv. time column counts it on the day it happened, so it lines up with your store's order dates. Put each day next to your store's orders from Google ads. If the store has orders and Google Ads has none, tracking is broken.

When it is not a problem

PerfoAds only checks Primary conversion actions that are switched on and recorded at least 10 conversions in the audit period. It flags one when its silence runs longer than its own normal gap. That bar is the biggest of 3 numbers: 3 days, twice the action's usual gap between conversions, or its longest past gap, capped at 14 days. A store that sells every day is flagged after 4 silent days. One that usually sells every 4 days, with a longest gap of 9, is flagged after 10. Secondary actions are never flagged, and neither is an action that started recording again. Before calling it a broken tag, rule out these:

• The days aren't settled yet. Google Ads credits a sale to the date your ad was clicked. So the last few days look light and fill in as late buyers finish. PerfoAds only counts days that have had time to settle.
• Sales really dropped. If your store's orders from ads fell too, the tag may be fine. Demand, stock, price or ads Google stopped showing could be the cause. Check for disapproved ads.
• A new or quiet action. Awaiting conversions can also mean the action was created under 48 hours ago, your campaigns are paused, or traffic is low.
• Credit moved elsewhere. An attribution model is the rule for which ad click gets credit for a sale. Changing it changes the way your conversions are counted, so sales can shift between campaigns without disappearing.
• The campaign bids on another goal. A goal is a group of conversion actions. Campaign-specific goals override your account-default goals, so the campaign may not bid on the account's main action at all. A silent account action doesn't hurt it.
• A planned switch. If you replaced an old purchase action on purpose, the old one should go silent. Check that the new one is recording. Then remove the old one, or set it to Secondary, which Google uses for reporting but not for bidding.

How to fix it

1. Test the tag with Tag Assistant. Tag Assistant is Google's free tag tester. In the Status column, hover over the status and select Troubleshoot, then Continue. Enter your home page URL, which Google prefers to your order confirmation page, and select Connect. Add a cheap product to the cart and place a test order you can refund. Then select Finish. Google warns that if you close the window first, the session cannot close correctly and will time out.
2. Find what changed. Think back to the last day it recorded. What changed on the site that day? Theme, checkout, apps, cookie banner, Tag Manager. Undo or repair that change. If the change was made inside Google Ads, see how to find who changed your campaign.
3. Shopify stores: check the app and the Thank you page. If the Google & YouTube app set up your tracking, check it's still connected to the right Google Ads account. When linked, it creates the purchase action and sets the other steps as secondary. If your tag lived in Additional scripts, Shopify's upgrade replaced it. Set it up again through the app.
4. Confirm it's recording. Google says actions verified in a Tag Assistant session update in your account after approximately 30 minutes. After a real sale, the status should go back to Active.
5. Add a data exclusion for the broken days. A data exclusion tells Smart Bidding to ignore a stretch of days. Go to Adjustments in the Tools menu, open the Exclusions tab and select the plus button (Google's steps). Cover the broken days plus your usual delay from click to sale. In Google's example, uploads broke October 15 to 18 with a 5-day delay, so the exclusion runs October 10 to 18. In the store example above, sales stopped recording October 7, the fix landed October 13, and most buyers finish within 3 days. So exclude October 4 to 13. Google says data exclusions are available for Search, Display, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns.
6. Do it fast and leave it in place. Google says to apply data exclusions as soon as possible, don't remove a data exclusion after it's been applied, and don't use data exclusions frequently. Backfilling means uploading the missing sales later. Google says it's generally not recommended to backfill data, because it can affect Search and Shopping bidding.
7. Expect a wobble. Bids and spend can dip for a while after the exclusion. Google says once the exclusion takes effect, bids will quickly adjust. Hold off on other big changes until results settle.

Once monitoring is on, PerfoAds runs a daily check at 06:00 UTC and lists an alert in your Overview when tracking breaks. Alerts show in the app only, with no email.

Check it with a query

This lists conversions by day and by conversion action for the last 30 days, for the whole account. It's written in GAQL, Google's query language for ads data. Run it in a Google Ads script with AdsApp.search(), or send it through the Google Ads API. The fields are in Google's API reference. All conversions includes Secondary actions, so every action shows up. Google doesn't return dates with no metrics, so the gap shows up as missing dates. Look at your Primary purchase action, because that's the one PerfoAds checks.

SELECT
  segments.date,
  segments.conversion_action_name,
  metrics.all_conversions
FROM customer
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS
ORDER BY segments.date DESC