Enhanced Conversions for Leads: Send Booked Jobs to Google

What are enhanced conversions for leads? It is how you tell Google Ads which of your leads became booked jobs. In Google’s words, enhanced conversions for leads is an upgraded version of offline conversion import that uses user-provided data, such as email addresses, to supplement imported offline conversion data to improve accuracy and bidding performance. Your website sends Google a hashed copy of the email address or phone number from each lead form. When that lead books, you import the booked job with the same details, and Google matches it back to the ad.

That matters for a local service business, because a form fill or a call is a lead, not a job, and Smart Bidding optimizes for whichever conversion types you include in the Conversions column. Google describes the gap itself: an ad sometimes starts a customer down a path that ultimately leads to a sale offline, such as at your office or over the phone, and importing offline conversions lets you measure what happens after the click or call. For a service business, that offline result is the booked job.

This guide covers how enhanced conversions for leads works, what a service business can send back to Google Ads, how to set it up, how to send back the calls that booked, and the export mistake that made one company’s booked jobs look about a third cheaper than they were. For the basics of counting calls, forms and bookings, start with our Google Ads conversion tracking guide.

How Enhanced Conversions for Leads Works

Google lays out the flow in five steps. For a service business, it reads like this:

1. Someone clicks your ad, lands on your site and fills in your quote or booking form.
2. The Google tag on your site sends Google a hashed copy of the email address or phone number from the form.
3. You keep the lead in your CRM, your booking software or a spreadsheet.
4. When the lead books a job, you import that booked job with the same email address or phone number, plus the Google click ID (GCLID) if you have it.
5. Google matches your import to the lead information from the tag and to signed-in Google accounts that engaged with your ad, and credits the booked job to the campaign.

The contact details are not sent in plain text. Enhanced conversions uses a secure one-way hashing algorithm called SHA256 on your first-party customer data, such as email addresses, before sending it to Google, and the Google tag hashes what it collects in the browser.

Enhanced conversions for leads vs a GCLID import

The older route to Google Ads offline conversions runs on the click ID alone. Google Ads gives every click that comes to your website from an ad a unique Google Click ID, or GCLID. You save it with the lead and send it back when the lead converts. That takes a hidden form field for the GCLID, plus a script that Google strongly recommends adding to every page of your site to capture it, and your lead system has to store it with each lead.

Google now steers advertisers to the newer route. If you have not adopted offline conversion import yet, Google recommends starting with enhanced conversions for leads instead, and it calls offline conversion import a legacy feature that doesn’t have the durability features enhanced conversions for leads offers. The click ID still helps: Google asks you to include GCLIDs with your uploads whenever possible, and requires them if you are not using a tag to collect user-provided data. Google also reports that advertisers who sent first-party data such as email addresses and phone numbers alongside GCLIDs saw a median 10% increase in conversions compared with standard offline conversion imports.

What changed in 2026

Two changes this year make many older setup guides out of date. First, enhanced conversions for web and for leads became a single feature with a simple on and off switch, and since April 2026, Google Ads accepts user-provided data from website tags, Data Manager and API connections at the same time, so you no longer pick one method. Second, if a developer built your uploads on the Google Ads API, check them: Google says that starting June 15, 2026, offline conversion imports and enhanced conversions for leads uploads move to the Data Manager API and are blocked in the Google Ads API, and developer tokens that had not sent a request between January and June 2026 are not allowlisted for legacy access.

What a Local Service Business Can Send Back to Google Ads

Most service businesses get leads two ways, through forms and phone calls, and Google Ads tracks each in its own way. Here is what each kind of conversion records and what it can tell you.

The first two columns follow Google’s Ads Help pages on conversion measurement, phone call conversions, call imports and enhanced conversions for leads, listed in the Sources at the end. The last column is our summary.

How to Set Up Enhanced Conversions for Leads

One caution first: if you run a clinic, leave enhanced conversions for leads off. It sends hashed contact details for each lead to Google, and our rule for clinics is that no patient information goes to an ad platform. For other service businesses, setup takes six steps:

1. Check the basics. Make sure auto-tagging is on, and that your website lead forms collect first-party customer data, an email address or a phone number. Google recommends the email address because it is a highly unique identifier that isn’t prone to being reformatted in your CRM, and suggests collecting both email and phone to improve your match rates.
2. Turn on enhanced conversions. In Google Ads, go to Settings under Goals, open the Customer data use panel, check Turn on enhanced conversions and agree to the data terms. To turn it on, you confirm that the Google Ads Data Processing Terms apply to your use of enhanced conversions and that you will comply with Google’s policies.
3. Let the Google tag capture your forms. When enhanced conversions for leads is enabled, the Google tag automatically captures relevant form interaction events on your website. In the Google tag settings, turn on automatic collection for Form interactions. If you use Tag Manager, Google’s setup uses a Conversion Linker tag and a Google Ads User-Provided Data Event tag, and its automatic collection can’t capture phone numbers.
4. Create a conversion action for the booked job. Under Goals, create a conversion action, check Conversions offline, then choose CRMs, files, or other data sources and Track conversions from clicks. Google highly recommends Qualified lead or Converted lead as the goal, and a converted lead can be any step you define as the conversion, such as a booked job. Give each stage of the funnel its own conversion action, since you would usually bid on only one stage. Then wait 4 to 6 hours before your first upload.
5. Connect your job records. Google recommends Data Manager for importing the data. You don’t need a full CRM: any system that captures lead information can be adapted, and a Google spreadsheet will also work. Upload every day if you can, which Google strongly recommends.
6. Start the new action as secondary. Google’s pages give different waits before it goes primary. Its implementation checklist recommends marking a new action secondary for the first 2 to 3 weeks, its offline import FAQ asks for daily uploads for one to two conversion cycles before the action goes in the Conversions column, and when the action replaces an existing GCLID import, its upgrade guide says to swap after the longer of 1 to 2 conversion cycles or 4 weeks. Wait for the longest that applies to you. Once the action reports as expected and its counts match your job records, make it primary so Smart Bidding can use it.

What to send with each booked job

• An email address or phone number. At least one piece of user-provided data is required, and sending every email address and phone number you have for that customer increases the likelihood of a match.
• The GCLID, when you have it. Google recommends sending it whatever your setup, to get the most from measurement.
• The conversion name and time. Use the conversion action’s exact name and the time the job was booked. An offline conversion can’t happen before the ad click, so a time that comes before the click is rejected.
• An order ID. Google says it helps control duplicate leads. For a service business, the job or order number from your booking or dispatch software is the natural choice.
• Every booked job, not only the ones you think came from ads. Google requires all conversions for the event, including those not attributed to Google Ads, for enhanced conversions for leads to work correctly.

Watch the clock too. Google accepts a conversion uploaded with personally identifiable information up to 63 days after the click, and one with a GCLID up to 90 days. If you hash the data yourself, normalize it first: remove spaces at the start and end, convert the text to lowercase, format phone numbers to the E.164 standard, remove any periods before the @ in gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses, then hash with SHA256. An E.164 number looks like +16505551234.

How to test enhanced conversions for leads

Send a test lead through your own form, and check that the tag fires and passes hashed data with Google Tag Assistant or your browser’s developer tools. Then open the diagnostics report: Summary under Goals, then the Diagnostics tab. Google rates the setup Excellent, Good, Needs attention or Urgent, and Urgent means enhanced conversions is not active, for example because your tags are not firing at all. To check the numbers, add the All conv. (by conv. time) column to your campaign report, segment it by conversion action, and compare it with your upload results file. Our Google Ads conversion tracking guide covers testing the rest of your setup.

Google Ads Call Tracking: Send Back the Calls That Booked

Plenty of leads never touch a form. They call. Google Ads call tracking has a few ways to decide whether a call counts, and only one of them knows whether the call became a job.

• Call length. Calls from ads and calls to the forwarding number on your website count when they last at least the minimum call length you set. Once call reporting is on, Google counts new calls with its default Calls from ads action and includes that action in your Conversions column automatically.
• Call recordings. With call recording on, Google’s AI can analyze the recording to judge lead quality, and it falls back to your call length when a call can’t be recorded. The feature is limited to calls where both parties are in the United States or Canada.
• Imported call conversions. You record each call’s caller number and start time, and note which calls led to conversions like sales, then import those calls. Google says this gives you more control over which calls count, such as counting only calls that include sales. Like the other call types, it requires Google forwarding numbers.

One trap when you add an import: if another conversion action already tracks the same calls, include only one of them in the Conversions column. Including both counts 2 conversions for every call, and if you bid for conversions, Google bids for 2 conversions on each call. Google recommends keeping the import in the Conversions column and taking out the other action. And if Google Ads shows plenty of calls while your phone stays quiet, our guide to Google Ads clicks but no calls walks through the causes.

Count Each Booked Job Once

Booked jobs only help if each one counts once, and a job export does not always arrive that way. When we reconciled a home-services install company’s dispatch export with its Google Ads account for June 1 to August 29, 2026, Google Ads had counted 569 conversions, quiz and form leads, at $110 each on $62,431 of spend. The dispatch export for the same 90 days had 642 rows of booked jobs but only 428 distinct order numbers, because its monthly tabs overlapped: the current month’s tab still held rows from the month before, so many jobs appeared twice.

Counting rows, ad spend came to about $97 per booked job, and the export showed more booked jobs than Google Ads had counted leads, the tell that something was counted twice. Counted once per order, ad spend came to $145.87 per booked job, with 0.75 booked jobs for every lead Google Ads counted. The raw rows made a booked job look about a third cheaper than it was. The rule we work by: dedupe any job or dispatch export to distinct order numbers before you divide it into ad spend. A booking rate above 1 is a reason to check the export for double counting before you call it a great month.

Duplicate rows can cause the same problem inside Google Ads. Google drops an upload as a duplicate when its click ID, conversion name and conversion time match one already in the system, and a second upload for the same click with a different time counts as a second conversion. Import conversion actions also count every conversion by default. So upload one row per order, with the order number as the order ID, and check the repeat rate column for the action, which shows the average number of conversions per converting click. A repeat rate well above 1 on a booked job action is a reason to check the export. Fixing it afterward is harder: Google lets you adjust conversions only up to 55 days from when they were first recorded. Then divide your ad spend by the deduped count, as our guide to cost per booked job explains.

What to Expect After You Switch to Booked Jobs

Expect fewer conversions, and expect them later. In the install company’s numbers above, Google Ads counted 569 leads, and the deduped export held 428 booked jobs. There is a delay between an upload and its conversions appearing in the account, and attributed conversions appear in reporting by their impression or click time, not the day you upload them. So last week’s numbers keep filling in after the week ends.

Expect errors that are not errors. Because you upload every booked job, including jobs from organic search and your other marketing, only some will match an ad. Google labels the rest Unknown clicks and says that with enhanced conversions for leads, the error is expected and can generally be ignored. If every upload shows it, though, Google says there is likely a problem with your setup: make sure your site is capturing the email address or phone number.

Expect quiet days, too. Google says enhanced conversions are most helpful for advertisers who receive at least 20 conversions per week, counting organic and ad-driven conversions. A smaller business may book fewer jobs than that, and at low volume, days without a booked job are normal. Example: at 20 booked jobs in 90 days, the chance that a given three-day stretch passes without one is about 51%. At 92 booked jobs in 90 days, it drops to 4.7%. That is our arithmetic, and it assumes jobs arrive at random, at a steady average rate, which real weeks only approximate. Read booked jobs by the week or the month before you decide a tag is broken.

Give bidding the same patience. Keep uploading at least daily, as Google asks, and wait out the step 6 swap before the action goes primary. Once it is primary, Smart Bidding needs a 7 to 14 day learning phase, and changing budgets, targets or conversion goals during it resets the learning window.

Get Your Offline Conversion Tracking Checked

Look at your own numbers first if your ad account shows more conversions than you had calls, forms and bookings, if your job export shows more booked jobs than leads, or if you keep job records but cannot say which ads produced booked work.

We set up and repair the tracking that tells your ad account which calls, forms and bookings came from ads, and which of them became booked work. Where your software can export jobs, booked jobs are matched back to ad clicks and sent to Google Ads as offline conversions. The export is deduped first, so a job entered twice counts once. You get a written map of what each action counts. Setup is included with Google Ads management, and call tracking software, if you need it, is billed to you directly. See how our Google Ads conversion tracking setup and repair works.

Or start with the free basic audit: five short fields, no call needed. It shows where the money went, what a booked customer costs, whether your tracking can be trusted, and what we would change first. The basic audit is free. A deeper audit is paid, and we tell you the price before we start. Get the free audit.

Sources

1. Google Ads Help, About enhanced conversions for leads. Checked October 11, 2026.
2. Google Ads Help, About offline conversion imports. Checked October 11, 2026.
3. Google Ads Help, Offline conversion imports FAQs. Checked October 11, 2026.
4. Google Ads Help, About enhanced conversions. Checked October 11, 2026.
5. Google Ads Help, Set up offline conversions using Google Click ID (GCLID). Checked October 11, 2026.
6. Google Ads Help, Upgrade offline conversion import to enhanced conversion for leads. Checked October 11, 2026.
7. Google Ads Help, Updates to your enhanced conversions settings. Checked October 11, 2026.
8. Google Ads Help, Configure the Google tag for enhanced conversions for leads. Checked October 11, 2026.
9. Google Ads Help, Configure Google Tag Manager for enhanced conversions for leads. Checked October 11, 2026.
10. Google Ads Help, How to upgrade offline imports. Checked October 11, 2026.
11. Google Ads Help, Enhanced conversions for leads implementation checklist. Checked October 11, 2026.
12. Google Ads Help, About the enhanced conversions for leads diagnostics report. Checked October 11, 2026.
13. Google Ads Help, About conversion measurement. Checked October 11, 2026.
14. Google Ads Help, About phone call conversion tracking. Checked October 11, 2026.
15. Google Ads Help, Measure calls from ads. Checked October 11, 2026.
16. Google Ads Help, Import phone call conversions. Checked October 11, 2026.
17. Google Ads Help, About conversion counting options. Checked October 11, 2026.
18. Google Ads Help, Fix discrepancies and errors in offline conversion imports. Checked October 11, 2026.

The account example comes from a Google Ads account and dispatch export we reconciled. It is shown by type of business, with its period, and no client is named. The quiet-day figures are our arithmetic on example volumes.