Google Ads

Create a new conversion in Google Ads

How to set up a purchase conversion in Google Ads

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Skip this step, if you've already created a purchase conversion in Google Ads

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We highly recommend setting up the native Google Ads conversion action instead of importing GA4 conversions. Here's why: Use Google Ads conversion tracking instead of importing GA4 events

 

1. Open Conversions in Google Ads

2. Initiate a new conversion creation

3. Choose conversion type Conversion on a website.
   Add the URL of your website.
   (Remove all other checkboxes)

4. Scan your domain

5. Choose the Google tag only

6. Save and continue

7. Choose Purchase as the conversion category

8. Configure the Google Ads conversion settings

   Use the following default settings. Only change if you know what you're doing.

• Create new conversion action: Set up manually using code
• Action optimization: Primary action used for bidding optimization
• Conversion name: Purchase
• Value: Use different values for each conversion
• Set up using: Event snippet (not Google tag)
• Default value: zero
• Count: Every

Configure the plugin

How to find and set the conversion ID and conversion label

 

1. Get the conversion ID and conversion label

   Open the purchase conversion in Google Ads.

   

   Copy the purchase conversion ID and label from the Google Tag Manager tab.

   

2. Set the conversion ID and label in the plugin

   

Using the Google for WooCommerce plugin at the same time

The Pixel Manager works together with the Google for WooCommerce plugin (formerly named Google Listings & Ads). As soon as Google Ads tracking is active in the Pixel Manager, it automatically switches off Google for WooCommerce's own tracking, so no duplicate conversions or remarketing events are sent.

Google for WooCommerce keeps doing everything else: the Merchant Center connection, the product feed sync, and campaign management. This also applies if you connect Google for WooCommerce to Merchant Center only and not to Google Ads.

If Google for WooCommerce generates your product feed, set the product identifier in the Pixel Manager to Post ID with gla_ prefix so the tracked IDs match the feed. See Product identifier and Plugin Compatibility.

Conversion Cart Data

This feature adds another level of detail to the purchase conversion. Along with the conversion value, it sends the individual items that were sold. In return, Google Ads reports revenue, cart size and item level performance for your Shopping campaigns.

Your Google Merchant Center ID is the numeric ID of your Google Merchant Center account. In the Pixel Manager it has exactly one job: saving it under Tracking Pixels → Google (Ads & GA4) → Merchant Center ID switches on Conversion Cart Data for Google Ads. There is no separate on/off toggle, and the feature is available in the free version.

Benefits

• Detailed reporting on items sold
• A clear measure of revenue (and gross profit, if you supply cost of goods sold) generated by Shopping Ads
• Detailed reporting on cart size and average order value

Google support article on conversions with cart data.

What the Google Merchant Center ID is

Google also calls it the Merchant Center account ID. It is the numeric identifier of the Merchant Center account that holds your product feed. It has 6 to 12 digits and looks like 123456789.

Google Ads uses it to work out which product catalog the item IDs in your purchase conversion belong to, so it can match the items you sold against the products in your feed.

It is an account identifier, not a credential. It is not an API key, a token or a secret.

Don't confuse it with the other Google IDs

The Google setup asks you for several identifiers that look interchangeable but are not:

ID	What it is	Where it goes in the Pixel Manager
Merchant Center ID (123456789)	Your Merchant Center account ID	Google (Ads & GA4) → Merchant Center ID
Google Ads Conversion ID (AW-123456789)	Identifies your Google Ads account for conversion tracking	Google (Ads & GA4) → Conversion ID
Conversion Label (AbC-D_efG…)	Identifies one specific conversion action	Google (Ads & GA4) → Conversion Label
GA4 Measurement ID (G-XXXXXXX)	Identifies a GA4 web data stream	Google (Ads & GA4) → Measurement ID
GA4 Property ID (123456789)	Identifies a GA4 property for the Data API	Google (Ads & GA4) → Data API Property ID
Google Ads customer ID (123-456-7890)	Your Google Ads account number	Not used by the Pixel Manager

The Merchant Center ID and the GA4 Property ID are both plain numbers, so they are the easiest pair to mix up. The Merchant Center ID comes from merchants.google.com, the GA4 Property ID comes from Google Analytics.

Find your Google Merchant Center ID

Sign in to the Google Merchant Center. The account ID is in your browser's address bar, in the a URL parameter, and it is there on every page of the account:

https://merchants.google.com/mc/overview?a=123456789
                                           ^^^^^^^^^
                                           Merchant Center ID

Copy only the digits after a=. Don't copy the whole URL, and don't include the a= itself.

Why the URL and not a settings screen?

Google reorganizes the Merchant Center interface regularly, and the ID has moved between screens over the years. The a URL parameter has stayed put through every version, so it is the one place we can point you to that keeps working.

If you manage more than one Merchant Center account

The a parameter always shows the account you currently have open. If you work with several accounts, or with sub accounts under an advanced (multi client) account, switch to the account that holds the feed for this shop first, then read the ID from the URL. Entering the ID of a different account means Google Ads cannot match your items and the cart data reports stay empty.

Add the Merchant Center ID in the Pixel Manager

1. In WordPress, open the Pixel Manager.
2. Go to Tracking Pixels → Google (Ads & GA4).
3. Open Show advanced settings in the Google Ads section.
4. Paste the number into the Merchant Center ID field.
5. Save.

The field accepts 6 to 12 digits and nothing else. If you paste a full URL, a value with spaces or an ID with dashes, the Pixel Manager rejects it, restores the previous value and shows the message "You have entered an invalid merchant ID. It only contains 6 to 12 digits."

What needs to be in place

Conversion Cart Data only goes live when all of these are true:

• A Google Ads purchase conversion is configured in the Pixel Manager. Both the Conversion ID and the Conversion Label must be set. See Configure the plugin. The Merchant Center ID on its own does nothing.
• The Merchant Center ID is saved.
• Your Merchant Center account is linked to your Google Ads account. This is done on Google's side. See Link a Google Ads account to Merchant Center.
• The product IDs the Pixel Manager sends match the id attribute in your Merchant Center feed. This is the single most common reason cart data reports stay empty. Set the matching value under Product identifier. If Google for WooCommerce generates your feed, use Post ID with gla_ prefix.

What the Pixel Manager sends

Once the feature is active, the Google Ads purchase conversion carries these extra parameters on top of the usual transaction ID, value and currency:

Parameter	Value
aw_merchant_id	The Merchant Center ID you saved
aw_feed_country	The visitor's country
aw_feed_language	The shop's language, derived from the WordPress locale
discount	The order's total discount
items	One entry per line item, with the product id, the price excluding tax, the quantity and the business vertical

The id of each item comes from your Product identifier setting, which is why that setting has to match your feed.

What you get in Google Ads

The cart data metrics appear in Google Ads under the Conversions column group, in the statistics tables at campaign, ad group and product level. Google also provides two predefined reports, Cart items sold and Cart items advertised.

Note on profit: revenue, orders, cart size and average order value come from the cart data alone. Gross profit and gross profit margin additionally require the cost_of_goods_sold attribute in your Merchant Center feed. Without COGS in the feed, Google Ads has no cost side to subtract and the profit columns stay empty. See Metrics available with conversions with cart data.

What entering the Merchant Center ID does not do. It does not replace the Conversion ID and Conversion Label setup, it does not create or upload a product feed, it does not get your products approved in Merchant Center, and it does not switch on dynamic remarketing. Dynamic remarketing is a separate feature, configured through the Business Vertical and the product identifier.

Verify the setup

1. Check the plugin. Open the Pixel Manager Dashboard and look at the Automatically activated features card. Conversion cart data shows as active once the conversion ID, the conversion label and the Merchant Center ID are all set. If it still shows inactive, the card tells you what is missing.
2. Check the actual event. Place a test order with the Console Logger enabled and look at the Google Ads: conversion event sent entry in the browser console. The payload must contain aw_merchant_id and an items array. Compare an item id against the same product in your Merchant Center feed. They have to be identical, character for character.
3. Check Google Ads. Cart data metrics need conversions to be processed first. Give it a day or two before concluding that something is wrong, and make sure the report's date range covers the day of the ad click.

Troubleshooting

I can't find my Merchant Center ID. Sign in at merchants.google.com and read the number after a= in the address bar. If the URL has no a parameter, you are most likely on the account chooser rather than inside an account. Open an account first.

The field won't accept my ID. The field takes 6 to 12 digits only. Remove spaces, dashes, quotes and any surrounding URL, then paste just the number.

I entered the ID but see no cart data in Google Ads. Work through What needs to be in place in order. In practice the cause is almost always one of two things: the Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts are not linked, or the product IDs the Pixel Manager sends don't match the id attribute in the feed. Step 2 of Verify the setup tells the two apart, because it shows you the exact IDs being sent.

I see revenue but the profit columns are empty. Gross profit needs the cost_of_goods_sold attribute in your Merchant Center feed. Add it there, and the profit metrics start filling in.

I also use Google for WooCommerce. That is fine, the two plugins work side by side. Google for WooCommerce keeps the Merchant Center connection and the feed sync, the Pixel Manager does the Google Ads tracking. Set the product identifier to Post ID with gla_ prefix so the IDs match the feed it generates. See Using the Google for WooCommerce plugin at the same time.

Phone Conversion Number

Google Ads allows tracking calls to a phone number on a website. It does this by automatically swapping the actual phone number with a Google number which will redirect the call to the actual phone number.

You can test the phone swapping by appending the following URL parameter on one of the pages where your phone number appears: #google-wcc-debug

The URL would then look like this: https://example.com/#google-wcc-debug

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You'll find more info about phone call conversion tracking on the Google support pages here.

Multiple store locations

The setting above tracks a single number. To track a different phone number and conversion label per store location, see the recipe Track phone conversions for multiple store locations.

Conversion Adjustments

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This is a feature only available for users of the Pro version. Get the Pro version here.

Expected warnings (known Google issue)

When Google Ads processes your conversion adjustment upload, it will show errors for orders that didn't originally come from a Google Ads click. For example, orders from organic search, direct visits, email campaigns, or other ad platforms. Since the Pixel Manager includes all refunded and cancelled orders in the feed (not just Google Ads orders), Google reports errors for the ones it can't match to a Google Ads conversion.

This is exactly what Google recommends and can be safely ignored. The adjustments for actual Google Ads conversions will be applied correctly.

The error messages you'll see are:

• "This conversion does not exist. Double-check all the parameters."
• "The conversion action specified in the adjustment request cannot be found. Make sure it's available in this account."

Google may also send email notifications and show campaign-level warnings about these errors. Despite how alarming they look, they are triggered by the same expected errors described above. This is an inconsistency on Google's side. Their warning system flags behavior that their own documentation tells you to expect. You can safely ignore these notifications as long as your upload report shows a mix of successful and failed rows.

If all rows fail (not just some), then something is misconfigured. Double-check that the conversion name in the Pixel Manager matches the Google Ads conversion name exactly (including capitalization and spacing), and that the upload schedule runs from the same Google Ads account that owns the conversion action.

For a detailed explanation, read our blog post: Why Google Ads Shows Errors for Conversion Adjustment Uploads.

General Info

Google Ads Conversion Adjustments allow you to restate or retract conversions after they've been sent to Google Ads. This is particularly useful when orders get canceled, partially and fully refunded after the initial purchase.

The Pixel Manager generates a CSV file with all necessary data that can be consumed by Google Ads every night.

To learn more about Conversion Adjustments, read the following Google Ads Help article: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7686447

Set up conversion adjustments

1. Copy the conversion name of the purchase conversion in Google Ads.

   1. Open Google Ads
   2. Open > Goals > Conversions > Summary > Goals
   3. Open the purchase conversion

   

   4. Copy the conversion name

   

2. In the Pixel Manager, open Tracking Pixels → Google (Ads & GA4) and paste the conversion name into the Conversion Adjustments: Conversion Name field (under Show advanced settings). The name has to match exactly.

3. Copy the conversion adjustments feed name from the Pixel Manager.

4. Set up a nightly upload of the conversion adjustments in Google Ads.

   1. Open Google Ads
   2. Open > Goals > Conversions > Uploads > Schedules
   3. Create a new schedule

   

   Settings:

   • Protocol: HTTPS
   • Source URL: The feed URL you copied from the Pixel Manager
   • Frequency: Every 24 hours
   • Time: 3:00 AM

   

   4. Click Save & Preview

5. Done

From now onward, Google Ads will download new conversion adjustments every night.

Additional Info

The Pixel Manager generates a list of adjustments that are between 2 and 4 days old. This is Google's recommended way how to upload conversion adjustments. The reason why it should not generate a list of adjustments right after they happen is the following: Google Ads can take up to 24 hours to process the initial purchase conversions. So if we upload conversion adjustments before Google Ads processes the initial conversions, Google Ads would throw an error.

The following is a report of what a regular conversion adjustments upload looks like:

Supported Events

Here's a list of supported events.

Custom Variables

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This is a pro feature. Get the pro version here

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Available from version 1.43.5 of the Pixel Manager

Google Ads allows you to track Custom Variables.

With the following filter you can add Custom Variables to the purchase conversion event:

/wp-content/themes/child-theme/functions.php

add_filter('pmw_google_ads_order_custom_variables', function ($custom_variables, $order) {

    $custom_variables['example_variable'] = 'example_string';
    $custom_variables['color']            = 'example_blue';
    $custom_variables['product_name']     = 'example_name';

    return $custom_variables;
    
}, 10, 2);