Track Formsite form submissions as conversions in Google Ads

Are you struggling to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads when someone submits a Formsite form on your website?

You're not alone, because it's weirdly difficult to do.

If you use something like Google Tag Manager, then you need to write a custom JavaScript listener to detect the form submission and push an event into the dataLayer, and then you need to wire up tags, triggers, and variables to pass it all through correctly.

Some teams skip that and just watch for a thank you page load or a button click instead, but that approach is notoriously leaky. Between ad blockers, Safari's tracking restrictions, and leads who switch devices partway through, you can lose close to 30% of your real conversions before Google Ads ever sees them. And on top of that, Google Ads wants you to send the lead's name, email and phone through to do Enhanced Conversions, and none of that information exists on a thank you page.

Thankfully, there's a far simpler path, and you won't need a developer to pull it off.

This guide walks through setting up server-side conversion tracking for Google Ads that fires automatically whenever a lead submits a Formsite form on your website.

Why server-side tracking matters for Google Ads

Conversion tracking has stopped being a nice-to-have. It can genuinely be the difference between a Google Ads account that gets good results and one that gets none at all.

Google Ads' smart bidding tools (Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and similar strategies) weigh up signals like location, device, time of day, and past purchase behavior to work out how likely a given searcher is to convert. It then adjusts your bids accordingly, helping your ads display more prominently for the people who look like they'll convert and less for those who won't.

Used well, it's a genuinely effective way to bring in more leads without increasing spend, but it only works if you are feeding it accurate conversion data. You need to tell Google "this visitor converted" and "this visitor didn't" so its models can learn what your best leads actually look like.

The trouble with browser-based tracking methods (like tracking thank-you page visits or clicks of the Submit button) is that they depend entirely on the visitor's own browser to send the conversion back to Google, and that opens up a few failure points:

• Ad blockers - Plenty of visitors run extensions that block ad scripts outright, so the Google Tag simply never fires and nothing the visitor does on your site gets tracked.
• Browser privacy limits - Safari and other privacy-first browsers cap how long the Google Tag can follow a visitor, sometimes to as little as a day, so someone who clicks your ad and converts a few days later can't be matched back to their original ad click.
• Multiple devices - Someone might click your ad on their phone while commuting, then come back later that evening and fill out your Formsite form on their laptop. Since browser tracking can't connect activity across separate devices, your ad never gets credit for the conversion.

Server-side tracking solves these issues. The lead's details get sent straight to Google's servers, which means ad blockers and privacy settings can't get in the way.

It might sound like a technical detail, but the impact shows up clearly in the numbers. Google's own research shows most businesses get a 23% lift in recorded conversions and a 10% reduction in cost per conversion once server-side tracking is in place, largely because the bidding algorithms finally have enough accurate data to figure out what your ideal customer looks like and chase down more people just like them.

3 simple steps to send server-side conversions to Google Ads from Formsite

Getting server-side tracking running between Formsite and Google Ads only takes a few minutes with Converly. Here's the process:

Step 1: Build your Conversion Flow in Converly

Converly makes it easy to fire a server-side conversion to Google Ads every time a Formsite form is submitted on your site.

Above is a screenshot of Converly's flow builder. Anyone who's used a tool like Zapier or any sort of email automation tool will recognize how it works.

You simply pick a trigger (like a Formsite form being submitted), then choose what should happen in response (sending a conversion through to Google Ads).

And that's genuinely the whole process. Within a few clicks, you've got working, server-side conversion tracking, without touching a line of code or looping in a developer.

Step 2: Add the Converly code to your website

After you publish your Conversion Flow, Converly gives you a little code snippet to install on your site.

Drop it into the Header or Custom Code section of your website (wherever your CMS or builder lets you insert scripts), and set it to run on every page. Already managing scripts through Google Tag Manager? You can add the snippet there instead if that fits your setup better.

Step 3: Test it works

With everything configured, jump over to your live site and submit a test entry through your Formsite form.

From there, head back into Converly, open the Conversion Flow, click the 3 dots menu in the top right corner, and choose View Logs.

Click into the entry for your test submission and you'll be able to see exactly what was captured and where it was routed.

Go a level deeper still and you can inspect the precise data sent over to Google Ads, along with how their server responded.

Once you see that test conversion land successfully in the log, you're done. Most people wrap up the entire setup in under 5 minutes.

Why Converly is the best way to send conversions to Google Ads from Formsite

There's more than one way to get Formsite submissions flowing into Google Ads as conversions, so what makes Converly worth choosing?

1. Easy to set up

The default option for setting up conversion tracking seems to be Google Tag Manager, but that involves writing custom JavaScript to detect the Formsite submission, pushing the lead's details into the dataLayer, pulling them back out with dataLayer Variables, hashing everything with SHA-256 (Google requires it), and finally piecing together the Tags and Triggers that tie it all together.

It's absolutely possible to pull off, but unless you already know Google Tag Manager well, it's going to take you a long time to figure out.

Converly makes it so much easier. You simply pick your trigger (a Formsite submission) and your action (a Google Ads conversion), and you're set. And if you already use an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT, you can connect it to Converly's MCP and just ask it to 'Set up conversion tracking between Google Ads and Formsite', and it can build the flow, install the code, test and launch it for you!

2. Not affected by ad blockers and privacy restrictions

Relying on browser-based tracking (Google Tag Manager, tracking thank-you page visits, etc.) means a real chunk of your conversions will never actually make it to Google, because ad blockers and privacy-first browsers stop the Google Tag from ever loading when a visitor lands on your site.

One study looking at over 7 million conversions found browser-based tracking only got about 70% of them through to Google Ads, meaning roughly 30% never made it.

Converly avoids that problem entirely. Conversions are sent straight to Google's servers instead of through the visitor's browser, so nothing can block them.

3. Works across devices

It's common for someone to first discover your business on their phone, then not actually get around to submitting a form until later, on a completely different device.

Tools like Google Tag Manager can't bridge that gap because the two visits happen in separate browsers on separate devices (so there's no way for Google to tie the conversion back to the original ad click).

Converly solves this by passing the lead's details (name, email, and more) directly to Google's servers, giving Google what it needs to match the conversion back to a real person and the original ad they clicked.

4. Sends more data

Beyond the lead's name, email, and phone number, Converly also captures technical signals like the Google Click ID (GCLID), IP address, and user agent, and passes all of it through to Google Ads with every conversion.

That matters because a lot of people share the same name, and plenty of people use more than one email address, so relying on those alone to match a conversion to a real person and the ad they clicked isn't 100% reliable. But sending the Google Click ID and IP address gives Google far more to work with when piecing everything together, which means it can much more accurately match the conversion back to a real person and the original ad they clicked.

5. Supports multiple tools and platforms

Converly connects with more than 100 form builders, scheduling tools, and chatbots, and it can send conversion events to Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads, ChatGPT Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Microsoft Ads, and several other platforms.

So when you pick up a new tool later on (say a chat widget for handling inbound leads), or start advertising somewhere new, there's no need to rebuild your tracking from the ground up. Just connect it inside Converly and you're finished.

6. Gives you a full conversion log and email alerts

Build your tracking through Google Tag Manager and there's really no easy way to confirm it's still working once it's live. It might pass every test on day one, then a change to your Formsite form, a tweak inside GTM, or an edit somewhere in Google Ads can break the whole chain, and you won't notice until your conversion count drops to 0 (and Google starts spending your budget wildly trying to chase conversions that no longer exist).

Converly closes that gap for good. Every single conversion gets logged, showing exactly what came in, what was sent to Google Ads, and how Google Ads responded. You can also switch on email alerts, either for every conversion or just the failures, so problems reach you the moment they happen rather than weeks later.

3 things you can do when you properly send conversions to Google Ads from Formsite

Once accurate conversion data starts flowing into Google Ads, a whole range of reporting and optimization options open up. Here are 3 worth highlighting:

1. Report on conversions by campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.

With real conversions flowing in, your Google Ads reporting starts showing you more than impressions and clicks. You get conversion counts, conversion rate, cost per conversion, return on ad spend, and more, and you can slice any of it by campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, country, and more to see exactly where your conversions are coming from.

That kind of visibility makes it far easier to spot what's paying off, what isn't, and where the biggest opportunities for growth are sitting.

2. Use Google's Smart Bidding technology

Manual bidding tends to be a blunt way to run a Google Ads account. You're essentially telling Google 'bid up to $3 a click' regardless of who's actually searching or how likely they are to become a lead.

Smart Bidding flips that around. You give Google a target (like $45 per lead), and it takes over the bidding for you. It weighs up signals about the searcher (device, location, age, interests, past behavior) and bids higher for the people who look likely to convert while pulling back on the ones who don't.

It's a genuinely strong way to bring in more leads at a lower cost, but it only works when the conversion data feeding it is accurate. Feed Google unreliable signals about which clicks turned into leads, and it can't learn what a good searcher actually looks like for your business, which leaves you paying for clicks that were never going to convert anyway.

Setting up accurate, server-side tracking through Converly puts you in a position to benefit from Google's smart bidding and bring in more leads at a lower cost per lead.

3. Retarget people who visited your site but didn't convert

Reliable conversion data also unlocks remarketing lists built from visitors who made it to your site but never finished a Formsite form.

From there, you've got a handful of ways to bring them back:

• Search Ads - Adjust your bids up or down for these visitors the next time they search your target keywords.
• Display Ads - Run banner ads across the Google Display Network to keep your brand visible while they browse other sites.
• YouTube Ads - Show them YouTube ads to stay front of mind while they watch video content elsewhere.

Wrap Up

If you're after a straightforward, reliable way to get conversions into Google Ads whenever someone completes a Formsite form on your site, Converly is a solid choice.

Conversions go directly to Google's servers, so ad blockers and browser privacy settings can't get in the way, and Converly passes along a full set of lead data (name, email, phone, IP address, user agent, and more) so Google has what it needs to accurately tie the conversion back to the original ad click, even if it happened weeks later on a completely different device.

Setup only takes a few minutes, and it comes with a 14-day free trial (with no credit card required), so give it a try today!