Google Ads Enhanced Conversions — What They Are and How to Set Them Up

Enhanced conversions improve the accuracy of your Google Ads conversion tracking by supplementing your existing tags with first-party customer data — like an email address or phone number — that is hashed and sent to Google to improve attribution. If you have noticed conversion numbers dropping or attribution gaps in your reports, enhanced conversions can help fill in the missing data.

This guide explains what enhanced conversions are, why they matter, and walks through the setup process step by step using Google Tag Manager.

What Are Enhanced Conversions?

Standard conversion tracking works by placing a cookie when someone clicks your ad, then reading that cookie when they convert on your site. The problem is that cookies are increasingly unreliable. Safari blocks third-party cookies by default. Chrome is phasing them out. iOS privacy changes limit cross-app tracking. Users switch devices between clicking an ad and converting.

Enhanced conversions add a second layer of identification. When someone converts on your site — filling in a form, completing a purchase — the conversion tag captures user-provided data (email address, phone number, name, or postal address), hashes it with SHA-256, and sends the hashed data to Google. Google then matches this hashed data against Google accounts to verify the conversion.

This means even if the cookie is lost, Google can still attribute the conversion by matching the hashed email to the Google account that clicked the ad. The result is more complete conversion data and better-informed Smart Bidding.

Two Types of Enhanced Conversions

Google offers two variants, and they serve different purposes:

Enhanced Conversions for Web

This is for conversions that happen on your website. When someone fills in a form or completes a purchase, the conversion tag reads the form data (email, phone, name), hashes it, and sends it alongside the standard conversion ping. No extra uploads or CRM connections needed — it all happens in the browser at conversion time.

Use this if your conversions happen online and you collect customer data during the conversion process.

Enhanced Conversions for Leads

This is for conversions that happen offline — after the website interaction. When someone fills in a lead form, the tag captures and hashes their email at the point of form submission. Later, when that lead converts offline (becomes a customer, attends a meeting, signs a contract), you upload the hashed email to Google Ads to record the offline conversion.

This is similar to standard offline conversion imports, but uses hashed email instead of (or alongside) the gclid. It is particularly useful when you cannot reliably capture the gclid on every form submission.

Why Google Introduced Enhanced Conversions

The shift towards enhanced conversions is driven by several industry changes:

• Cookie deprecation: Third-party cookies — the foundation of traditional conversion tracking — are being phased out across all major browsers
• iOS App Tracking Transparency: Apple’s privacy changes reduced the ability to track users across apps and websites on iOS devices
• Cross-device gaps: People click ads on their phone and convert on their laptop. Cookies do not follow across devices, but a hashed email linked to a Google account does
• Browser privacy features: Browsers like Safari and Firefox aggressively restrict cookies, causing conversion data loss even without explicit user opt-outs

The net effect is that standard conversion tracking is missing more and more conversions each year. Enhanced conversions recover a significant portion of this lost data. Google reports that advertisers typically see a 5-15% increase in reported conversions after enabling enhanced conversions.

Setting Up Enhanced Conversions for Web (GTM Method)

This walkthrough uses Google Tag Manager, which is the most common setup method for advertisers who already have GTM installed. If you have not set up basic conversion tracking yet, do that first — see our GTM conversion tracking guide.

Step 1: Enable Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account
2. Go to Goals > Conversions > Settings (the gear icon at the top of the Conversions page)
3. Expand the Enhanced conversions section
4. Check Turn on enhanced conversions for web
5. For the implementation method, select Google Tag Manager
6. Click Save

This tells Google Ads to expect enhanced conversion data from your GTM tags. The setting applies account-wide — you only need to do this once.

Step 2: Edit Your Existing Conversion Tag in GTM

You do not need to create a new tag. Enhanced conversions are added to your existing Google Ads Conversion Tracking tag:

1. Open Google Tag Manager and go to your workspace
2. Click Tags and find your existing Google Ads Conversion Tracking tag
3. Click to edit it
4. Scroll down to the section that says “Include user-provided data from your website”
5. Check this box

Now you need to tell GTM where to find the user data. You have two options:

Step 3 (Option A): Automatic Collection with CSS Selectors

The simplest approach. GTM will look at the page at conversion time and try to find form fields matching common patterns (email inputs, phone inputs, etc.).

1. After checking “Include user-provided data,” select “Automatic” as the data source
2. GTM will attempt to detect email, phone, first name, last name, and address fields automatically
3. Save the tag

This works well if your conversion page has a standard form with clearly labelled fields. It does not work well if the form data is no longer visible on the conversion page — for example, if you redirect to a thank-you page that does not display the submitted information.

Step 3 (Option B): Manual Configuration with Variables

For more control, you can specify exactly where to find each data point:

1. After checking “Include user-provided data,” select “Manual configuration”
2. Choose “New variable” to create a User-Provided Data variable
3. For each data field (email, phone, first name, last name, street, city, region, postal code, country), you can specify either:
   • A CSS selector pointing to the form field (e.g., input[name="email"] or #email-field)
   • A JavaScript variable or dataLayer variable that contains the value
4. At minimum, provide the email address — this is the most effective identifier for matching
5. Save the variable and the tag

The manual method is more reliable because you control exactly which data is captured. If your thank-you page does not display the form data, use a dataLayer variable approach — push the form data into the dataLayer on submission and reference it in your enhanced conversion variable.

Step 4: Preview and Test

1. Click Preview in GTM
2. Navigate to your conversion page and submit a test form
3. In the Tag Assistant panel, click on your conversion tag under “Tags Fired”
4. Look for the “User-provided data” section in the tag details
5. Verify that the email (and any other fields you configured) are being captured — they will appear as hashed values in the debug output

If the user-provided data section is empty, the CSS selectors or variables are not matching. Common issues:

• The form data is not present on the page when the tag fires (e.g., you redirected to a thank-you page)
• The CSS selector does not match the actual form field (inspect the form in DevTools to verify the selector)
• The form uses dynamic field names that change on each page load

Step 5: Publish and Verify

1. Once testing confirms the data is being captured, click Submit to publish your GTM container
2. In Google Ads, go to Goals > Conversions > Summary
3. Click on your conversion action and go to the Diagnostics tab
4. After a few days (not immediately), you should see enhanced conversion data in the diagnostics report
5. Look for the “Enhanced conversions” status — it should show “Recording” or “Active”

It can take up to 5 days for the diagnostics to fully populate after you enable enhanced conversions. Do not make changes during this period — give it time to collect data.

Setting Up Enhanced Conversions for Leads

Enhanced conversions for leads works differently from the web version. Instead of matching data at the point of online conversion, it captures hashed data during the initial form submission, then lets you upload offline conversion data tied to that hashed identifier.

The setup in Google Ads is similar:

1. Go to Goals > Conversions > Settings
2. Expand Enhanced conversions for leads
3. Turn it on and select your implementation method (GTM or Google tag)
4. Create a separate conversion action for offline lead conversions (Goals > Conversions > New > Import > CRM)

In GTM, you configure the existing conversion tag to capture the email at the point of form submission. Later, when you upload offline conversions, you include the hashed email instead of (or in addition to) the gclid. Google matches the hashed email from your upload against the hashed email captured at form submission to attribute the conversion.

This approach is particularly valuable if your gclid capture is unreliable or if leads convert across a long sales cycle where cookies have expired.

Privacy and Data Handling

A common concern with enhanced conversions is privacy. Here is how the data handling works:

• Hashing happens in the browser: Customer data (email, phone, name) is hashed using SHA-256 before it leaves the user’s browser. Google never receives the plaintext data.
• One-way hash: SHA-256 is a one-way function — you cannot reverse the hash to recover the original email address. Google uses the hash to match against its own hashed user database.
• No new data collection: Enhanced conversions use data that the user voluntarily provided on your form. You are not collecting anything new — you are sending a hashed version of data you already have.
• Matching only: Google uses the hashed data solely to match the conversion to the ad click. It is not used for targeting, building audience profiles, or any other purpose.

Consent Requirements

Enhanced conversions require that you have a legal basis for processing the user’s data. In practice, this means:

• Your privacy policy should mention that you use conversion tracking and may share hashed data with advertising platforms for measurement purposes
• In the EU/UK (GDPR): You need user consent for conversion tracking, which typically means a cookie consent banner. If the user consents to marketing/analytics cookies, that generally covers enhanced conversions as well. Consult with your legal advisor for your specific situation.
• In other regions: Ensure you comply with local data protection laws. Most privacy frameworks allow first-party data use for measurement when properly disclosed.

Google’s enhanced conversions are designed to be privacy-preserving, but they do not remove your obligation to have proper consent mechanisms in place.

Common Setup Mistakes

Wrong CSS selectors: The most frequent issue. Your CSS selector needs to match the actual form field on the conversion page. Use your browser’s DevTools (right-click > Inspect) to find the correct selector. Remember that class names and IDs can vary between form plugins.

Data not available on the conversion page: If your form redirects to a thank-you page, the form field values are no longer in the DOM when the conversion tag fires. Solutions: use the automatic method (which sometimes captures data before the redirect), pass data through the dataLayer, or trigger the conversion tag on the form page itself before the redirect.

Not testing properly: The Tag Assistant preview shows whether user-provided data is being captured. If you skip this step and just publish, you might not discover the issue for days until you check the diagnostics in Google Ads.

Enabling without a conversion tag: Enhanced conversions are an addition to existing conversion tracking, not a replacement. You must have a working Google Ads conversion tag before enhanced conversions will do anything.

Expecting immediate results: Enhanced conversions data takes up to 5 days to appear in diagnostics and up to 30 days to show full impact on your conversion reporting. Do not make changes or assume it is broken during this initial period.

Verifying Enhanced Conversions Are Working

After setup, here is how to confirm everything is working:

1. Wait at least 48-72 hours after publishing the GTM container
2. Go to Goals > Conversions > Summary in Google Ads
3. Click on the conversion action that has enhanced conversions enabled
4. Go to the Diagnostics tab
5. Check the “Enhanced conversions” section — you should see a tag health indicator and match rate
6. A match rate above 50% is typical. Higher is better, but even 30-40% means enhanced conversions are recovering data that would otherwise be lost.

If the diagnostics show “No data” after a week, revisit your GTM configuration. The most likely cause is that user-provided data is not being captured by the tag — go back to Preview mode and test again. Include enhanced conversions verification as part of your regular conversion tracking audit.

Should You Use Enhanced Conversions?

In almost all cases, yes. If you are running Google Ads and tracking conversions, enhanced conversions improve the accuracy of your data with minimal setup effort. The main reasons to enable them:

• More accurate conversion counts (recovering conversions lost to cookie restrictions)
• Better Smart Bidding performance (more data means better optimisation decisions)
• Improved cross-device attribution (linking mobile clicks to desktop conversions)
• Future-proofing against further cookie deprecation

If you use WordPress, TrueConversion handles enhanced conversions automatically — it captures form data and sends it hashed to Google Ads without any GTM configuration needed. For sites not on WordPress, the GTM method described above is the standard approach.

Summary

Enhanced conversions supplement your existing conversion tracking with hashed first-party data to improve attribution accuracy. The setup involves enabling enhanced conversions in Google Ads, then configuring your GTM conversion tag to capture user-provided data via CSS selectors or dataLayer variables. Test thoroughly in Preview mode before publishing, and give the system at least 5 days to populate diagnostics data.

For lead generation businesses, consider using both enhanced conversions for web (to improve online conversion tracking) and enhanced conversions for leads (to better attribute offline conversions). Together with a solid primary and secondary conversion setup, this gives Smart Bidding the most complete picture of which clicks generate real business value.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this GDPR compliant?

Enhanced conversions can be GDPR compliant, but compliance depends on your overall consent framework. You need a legal basis for processing the data (typically consent via a cookie banner), your privacy policy must disclose the use of conversion tracking with hashed data sharing, and you should implement Google’s consent mode if you operate in the EU. The hashing of data before transmission is a privacy-preserving measure, but it does not remove the requirement for consent. Consult your legal advisor for your specific circumstances.

What data does Google actually receive?

Google receives SHA-256 hashed versions of the customer data fields you configure — typically email address, and optionally phone number, name, and postal address. The hashing happens in the browser before any data is sent. Google cannot see the original email or phone number. It uses the hashed values solely to match against its own hashed database of signed-in Google users, to attribute the conversion to the correct ad click.

How do I know enhanced conversions are working?

In Google Ads, go to your conversion action’s Diagnostics tab. After 48-72 hours, you should see an “Enhanced conversions” section showing a health status and match rate. In GTM Preview mode, check that the “User-provided data” section of your conversion tag shows hashed values when you test a conversion. If both are showing data, enhanced conversions are working correctly.

Do I need consent to use enhanced conversions?

Yes, in most jurisdictions. Enhanced conversions use first-party customer data for advertising measurement, which requires disclosure and typically consent. In GDPR regions, this falls under your existing cookie consent requirements — if users consent to marketing/analytics tracking, that generally covers enhanced conversions. In other regions, ensure your privacy policy discloses the practice. Google also offers Consent Mode integration for granular consent management.