This is one of the most common questions we get. The Activity page in Converly says a conversion was delivered to Google Ads, but when you go looking for it in Google Ads, it isn't there.

In almost every case, nothing is broken. Google Ads simply has its own rules about which conversions it shows in your reports, and when it shows them.

To work out what's going on, follow the instructions below. The reasons are in order of how often we see them, so start at the top and work your way down.

Delivered isn't the same as counted

When Converly says All delivered, it means Google received the conversion and accepted it. That's the part Converly controls, and it's almost always working.

Whether Google then counts it in your reports is a separate decision Google makes afterwards, based on ad clicks, timing and your account settings. Google says this itself in its own documentation. A successful upload doesn't guarantee the conversion gets credited to one of your ads.

Before you start, check Converly sent it

The first step is to rule out Converly. It only takes a few seconds.

Open the Activity page in Converly and find the conversion. Then look at its status:

While you've got the conversion open, click the Google Ads card and check whether there's a GCLID in the details. Make a note of it, because the first reason below depends on it.

1. The visitor never clicked one of your Google ads

This is by far the most common reason, and it catches almost everyone out.

Google Ads only shows conversions it can link back to a click on one of your ads. When someone clicks your ad, Google adds a click ID (called a GCLID) to the address of the page they land on. Converly captures it and sends it with the conversion, and that's how Google knows which ad the lead came from.

If the visitor found you some other way, there's no click ID to send. For example, if they:

Converly still sends the conversion to Google Ads, and Google still accepts it. But with no ad click behind it, Google has nothing to credit it to, so it never shows up in your reports.

That's exactly how it's meant to work. Google actually recommends sending all your conversions, knowing only some of them will be credited to an ad. And a lead that didn't come from a Google ad shouldn't show up as a Google Ads conversion anyway.

How to check. Open the conversion in Converly and click the Google Ads card. If there's a GCLID, the visitor clicked one of your ads. If there isn't, they didn't, and this conversion won't appear in Google Ads.

The only slight oddity is enhanced conversions. Along with the click ID, Converly sends Google a scrambled (hashed) copy of the person's email address and phone number. If they clicked one of your ads at some earlier point while signed in to their Google account, Google can sometimes match them back to that click even without a GCLID on this visit. That's why we recommend leaving Enhanced Conversions switched on. It won't create a conversion out of nothing, but it does recover some of the leads whose click ID went missing (for example, because they came back a few days later on a different device).

This is also why a test conversion from your own website usually won't show in Google Ads. Unless you clicked one of your own ads first, there's no click for Google to credit it to.

2. Google reports it on the day of the ad click, not the day of the form fill

This one causes a lot of confusion.

In your main Google Ads conversion columns, a conversion is reported against the date the person clicked your ad, not the date they filled in your form.

So if someone clicked your ad on the 2nd, thought about it for a week, and filled in your form on the 9th, Google Ads reports that conversion on the 2nd. If you're only looking at today, or the last few days, you won't see it.

How to check. Widen your date range to the last 30 days or more and look again. If the conversion count on an earlier day has gone up, you've found it.

Even better, add the column called All conv. (by conv. time) to your report. It reports conversions against the day they actually happened, which is what most people expect when they go looking. It's also the column Google itself suggests for checking that an uploaded conversion arrived.

3. Google hasn't finished processing it yet

Uploaded conversions don't appear in Google Ads straight away.

Google says imported conversions take around 3 hours to show up, and its general reporting guidance allows 24 to 48 hours. Conversions from some mobile and app placements can take longer again.

So allow a full day before you start worrying, and up to 3 days before you decide something is genuinely wrong.

How to check. Simply wait and look again tomorrow. If you'd like to see Google's own view of what it has received, go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, click your conversion action, and open the Diagnostics tab. Just keep in mind this also lags behind real time.

Don't keep sending test conversions

When a test doesn't appear within a few minutes, it's tempting to send another one. Please don't.

All you end up with is a pile of test conversions that land at once a day later, which makes your reports harder to read and can throw off your campaign data. Send one, note the time, and check back tomorrow.

4. It's in All conversions, but not in the Conversions column

Google Ads has 2 main conversion columns, and they don't contain the same things:

There are 2 ways a conversion can end up in All conversions but not in Conversions. Either the conversion action is set to Secondary (secondary actions are deliberately kept out of the Conversions column and out of bidding), or the goal it belongs to isn't being used by that campaign.

How to check. Add the All conversions column to your report. If the conversion shows up there but not under Conversions, this is your answer.

How to fix it. In Google Ads, go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, and find your conversion action. Check whether it's set to Primary or Secondary, which goal it belongs to, and whether that goal is used by the campaign you're looking at.

Important: Only change it to Primary if you actually want Google to bid towards these leads. It directly changes how your campaigns spend money.

5. The ad click was outside your conversion window

Every Google Ads conversion action has a conversion window. It's the maximum time Google will wait after an ad click before it stops counting conversions from that click.

The default is 30 days, and you can set it anywhere from 1 to 90 days.

So if your window is 30 days, and someone clicked your ad 45 days ago and only filled in your form today, Google accepts the conversion and then doesn't count it. The click is simply too old.

This mostly affects businesses with long sales cycles, which is common in manufacturing, construction and professional services. Someone researches you for 2 months before they get in touch, and by then the original click has aged out.

How to check. In Google Ads, go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, click your conversion action, and look at its Conversion window setting. Compare it with how long your buyers usually take to get in touch.

How to fix it. Make the conversion window longer. If your sales cycle genuinely runs to 2 or 3 months, set it towards the 90 day maximum.

Important: Changing the window only affects conversions from that point on. It won't go back and recover leads that already fell outside the old window. Google also won't accept a conversion at all once the ad click is more than 90 days old.

Less common reasons

If you've worked through everything above and the conversion still isn't there, it's usually one of these.

Google filtered it out as invalid

Google runs its own checks on conversions and quietly discards any it thinks are spam or invalid. It can also remove conversions later if it decides the original click was invalid traffic.

You won't get a notification when this happens, and there's nothing to fix on your side. It's mainly worth knowing so a small gap between what Converly sends and what Google reports doesn't worry you.

Your conversion action only counts one conversion per click

Each Google Ads conversion action has a Count setting. Set to Every, Google counts every conversion that follows an ad click. Set to One, it only counts the first.

So if the same person fills in your contact form twice, or fills in 2 different forms after clicking one ad, Google may accept the second one and then not count it. You'll find this setting on the conversion action, under Goals, then Conversions, then Summary.

You also have your own Google Ads tag on your site

If you already had a Google Ads conversion tag on your website before you set up Converly, both your tag and Converly may be reporting the same form fill.

That's fine, and Converly is built for it. Every conversion carries a unique ID, and the same ID goes to Google from both the browser and our servers, so Google recognises them as the same conversion and only counts it once. The confusion is that people sometimes go looking for 2 conversions, find 1, and think one went missing. Nothing did.

Your Google Ads account is in a different time zone

Google Ads reports in the time zone set on your account, which was chosen when the account was created.

If that's different to your own time zone, conversions near the start or end of the day can land on the day before or after the one you expect. You can check the time zone in your Google Ads account settings.

The credit went to a campaign you weren't looking at

Google decides which campaign, ad group and keyword gets credit for each conversion, and it doesn't always match what you'd expect.

Most conversion actions use data driven attribution, which splits the credit across every ad the person interacted with. So a single lead can show up as 0.33 or 0.5 of a conversion against the campaign you're checking, rather than a whole one.

If you're filtering to one campaign, remove the filter and look at the total for the whole account. The conversion is often there, just credited somewhere you wouldn't have thought to look.

The conversion action belongs to your manager account

Agencies often set up conversion actions in their manager (MCC) account and share them with client accounts.

If that's how yours is set up, check the Attribution reports in the manager account rather than the client account. That's where Google recommends looking for conversions tracked across accounts.

The conversion was estimated rather than recorded

When Google can't see a conversion directly (for example, because the visitor declined advertising cookies or switched devices), it sometimes estimates it instead.

These estimated conversions do show in the Conversions column alongside the others, so they rarely explain a number that's missing altogether. But they can take up to 5 days to settle, so your totals may creep up during that time. And because they're estimates rather than a record of one specific person, you won't be able to find an individual lead among them.

A segment is hiding the numbers

If you've added a segment to your report (like Conversion action or Conversion lag), some columns stop showing numbers and show a dash instead. If your report has suddenly gone empty after segmenting it, simply remove the segment and look again.

Still can't find it?

If you've worked through all of the above and it still doesn't add up, get in touch and we'll look into it with you.

To make it quick, include the following:

We can see exactly what Converly sent to Google and what Google said back, so with those details we can usually tell you within a few minutes whether the conversion is sitting in your account somewhere or was never going to be counted.