Enhanced conversions for leads not working (but offline imports work)

A lead-gen team brought us this problem. Their offline conversion imports landed in Google Ads every day. Enhanced conversions for leads never showed anything, and Google support couldn’t say why. The cause is usually that the two features are checked in different places and need different things. This guide walks each cause in order: symptom, cause, check, fix.

This guide is part of our offline conversions series. For the full setup, see the enhanced conversions guide and the Google Ads offline conversion import guide.

Why imports work while enhanced conversions don’t

Google Ads has two diagnostics reports, and they answer different questions. Offline data diagnostics rates how well-formed and valid your uploaded rows are. The enhanced conversions for leads diagnostics report rates whether the whole enhanced conversions setup is active: the tag on your forms, the customer data it collects, and how your uploads match it. A clean GCLID upload can rate Excellent in the first report while the second says Urgent.

Google’s setup guide explains why the tag matters. When you import a lead, Google matches the hashed customer data to the same data collected on your website, such as the lead form, and to signed-in customers who engaged with your ad. Without the tag side, there is nothing on the website to match to.

How to read the enhanced conversions for leads diagnostics

1. In Google Ads, open Goals, then Summary.
2. Find the conversion action you upload leads to. If Google sees a problem, its status reads Check enhanced conversions.
3. Hover over the status and click Go to diagnostics. The report opens filtered to that action.
4. For every action at once, use the Diagnostics tab at the top of the Summary page.

The report gives each action one of four data quality levels:

• Excellent. The setup is active and fully optimized.
• Good. Active, with areas to improve, such as adding the Google tag on your website.
• Needs attention. Active, but with errors, such as missing information.
• Urgent. Not active. Google’s examples are tags not firing at all, or all tag pings missing personal data.

Each level comes with alerts, and each alert names a cause. The table maps them. Alerts use the past day of data, or the past 7 days when one day is too thin.

The causes, one by one

Work through these in order. The early ones are settings that take a minute to check. The later ones need your site, your CRM export or your upload code.

1. Enhanced conversions is off, or the customer data terms aren’t accepted

Symptom. GCLID imports report normally, and there is no enhanced conversions data or alert to read. In the API, uploads return CUSTOMER_NOT_ENABLED_ENHANCED_CONVERSIONS_FOR_LEADS.

Cause. Since April 2026, enhanced conversions for web and leads share one on/off setting, and Google moved existing users over automatically if they had agreed to the customer data terms (settings update). The terms gate the tag too. Google says that if the tag sees user-provided data for a destination that hasn’t accepted the terms, “the data will not be collected or processed by Google” (Google tag setup).

Check. In Goals, then Settings, expand Customer data use. Confirm Turn on enhanced conversions is checked and the customer data terms show as Accepted. Then open the conversion action itself, because Google lets you opt out of enhanced conversions per action.

Fix. Turn it on and accept the terms. If you can’t see the terms, a manager account tracks your conversions. Google says the terms must then be accepted from that manager account, and from any manager account that uploads on its behalf with cross-account tracking. Accepting them is a business decision for the account owner, so bring them in.

Older guides tell you to pick a method, such as Google Tag Manager or the Google Ads API. Google says those method choices go away with the single switch, and that Google Ads now accepts user-provided data from website tags, Data Manager and API connections at the same time.

2. The Google tag doesn’t collect user-provided data on the lead form

Symptom. Urgent, with Tag not firing on your website forms, Improve performance with Google tag user-provided data, or Tag is missing user-provided data. It’s the cause we check first when imports work: the upload is fine, but the website side was never set up.

Cause. Enhanced conversions for leads has two steps, per Google’s setup guide. Step 1 is the Google tag capturing hashed email or phone on the lead form. Step 2 is importing the same data with your offline conversions. If you started with GCLID imports, you may only have done step 2. Within step 1, these are the usual breaks:

• Form interactions are off. In the Google tag settings, Google asks you to open Manage automatic event detection and enable automatic collection for Form interactions.
• Automatic collection can’t see the data. In Google Tag Manager, the User-Provided Data variable has three types: Automatic, Manual and Code. Google says automatic collection can’t collect phone numbers, and to use manual or code setup if you need control over where inputs are collected.
• The form lives in an iframe or a third-party tool. Google says these forms may need the code method, calling the Google tag from your own JavaScript.
• The data isn’t there when the tag fires. If the email was entered on an earlier page or inside an iframe, Google says it must be available in a variable or the data layer when the tag runs.
• A selector breaks. Google notes CSS selectors may not work on all browsers, or may behave differently on mobile and desktop. It recommends the element’s ID attribute, which changes less often.
• Another tag fires first. If the Google Ads User-Provided Data Event tag doesn’t receive input, Google suggests setting Wait for Tags on the Form Submission trigger.

Check. See how to check the tag on a live form below.

Fix. With the Google tag on the page, the code method looks like this. You can pass raw values: Google says it normalizes and hashes them before they reach its servers.

<script>
  // Run on form submit, after the visitor has typed their details
  gtag('set', 'user_data', {
    email: leadEmail,            // raw is fine; the tag normalizes and hashes it
    phone_number: leadPhone      // E.164, such as +18005550199
  });
  gtag('event', 'form_submit', { send_to: 'AW-CONVERSION_ID' });
</script>

If you pre-hash, Google’s keys are sha256_email_address and sha256_phone_number, with hex SHA-256.

3. The upload has no hashed email or phone

Symptom. Uploads succeed and conversions are attributed, but only through GCLID. Or the report shows Importing limited user-provided data.

Cause. A GCLID-only upload is plain offline conversion import. Enhanced conversions for leads needs at least one of email, phone or address in each upload row. Two variants are common:

• The upload still uses a legacy file. Google’s import guidelines say enhanced conversions for leads only supports Google Ads Data Manager files, and legacy file setups need to upgrade to Data Manager.
• Only leads with a GCLID are exported. Check whether your CRM export filters on the click ID. Google says to import all events that have user-provided data, even without a GCLID.

Check. Open a recent upload or the Data Manager column mapping. Confirm email or phone is mapped, and that rows without a GCLID are included.

Fix. Upload every lead with email or phone. Keep sending the GCLID when you have it: Google says it is required if you don’t use a tag to collect user-provided data, and recommended either way. If you capture the GCLID yourself for the CRM, our default is a first-party cookie set from your own tracking domain, such as a server-side Google Tag Manager container on sgtm.example.com. Google recommends serving that container from the same origin as your site, because cookies it sets need the two to share a domain (custom domain guide). The server-side tagging guide covers the setup.

4. Hashing or normalization doesn’t match

Symptom. No user-provided data matches. In the API, most rows return CLICK_NOT_FOUND. In the UI, almost every row shows Unknown clicks.

Cause. Google compares hashes, so one extra space or a capital letter produces a different hash. Some unmatched rows are normal, because you upload organic leads too. Google says to treat CLICK_NOT_FOUND as a warning unless it hits most of your conversions (API troubleshooting).

Check. Take one lead you know came from a Google ad. Hash its email the way your pipeline does and compare it with a correct hash of the same value.

Fix. Before hashing, Google asks you to:

1. 1Remove leading and trailing spaces.
2. 2Convert the text to lowercase.
3. 3Format phone numbers in E.164: a plus sign, the country code, and no dashes, brackets or spaces.
4. 4For gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses, remove the periods before the @, and remove any plus sign and everything after it up to the @.
5. 5Hash with SHA-256. The Google Ads API wants a lowercase hex string. Don’t hash country, state, city or ZIP code.

Data Manager in Google Ads normalizes and hashes unhashed values for you (data preparation guide), which removes one place for this to go wrong. Google also lists a rarer cause: if the uploading account differs from the account that owns the conversions, the uploader may have accepted the terms while the owner has not.

5. The upload goes to the wrong conversion action

Symptom. API errors INVALID_CONVERSION_ACTION_TYPE or NO_CONVERSION_ACTION_FOUND. In the UI, Wrong Google Ads account for clicks.

Cause. Enhanced conversions for leads needs an Import from clicks action, type UPLOAD_CLICKS in the API, that is enabled and owned by the account you upload to (Manage offline conversions).

Check. In Goals, then Summary, look at the Conversion source column for the action, and confirm which account owns it.

Fix. Create the action under Goals, then Summary: choose Conversions offline, add a data source, then select CRMs, files, or other data sources and Track conversions from clicks. Check Turn on enhanced conversions for leads when Google asks. In the API, don’t set custom_variables on conversions that carry user identifiers. Google says those are rejected.

6. A newer API integration is blocked

Symptom. CUSTOMER_NOT_ALLOWLISTED_FOR_THIS_FEATURE on UploadClickConversions. You may see it when a newer script or tool sends the leads upload while an older GCLID job keeps working.

Cause. From June 15, 2026, developer tokens with no offline conversion upload requests between December 17, 2025 and June 15, 2026 are restricted from offline uploads in the Google Ads API (deprecations). Google’s help pages say enhanced conversions for leads uploads moved to the Data Manager API with offline conversion import. Because the rule follows the developer token, two pipelines in one account can behave differently.

Check. Find which integration sends the leads upload and which API it calls.

Fix. Send leads through a Data Manager connection in Google Ads, or through the Data Manager API. Our offline conversion import guide covers each route.

7. Consent denies ad_user_data

Symptom. Enhanced conversions record for some regions or visitors and not others, or coverage is far lower than your form volume.

Cause. Google’s consent mode reference says ad_user_data is required for enhanced conversions. When it is denied, use of personal data for online advertising is disabled, including user-provided data. For uploads, Google highly recommends filling in the consent field, because leaving it empty may make conversions not attributable.

Check. In Tag Assistant, read the consent state at the moment the form is submitted. In your upload, check that the consent columns are filled.

Fix. Make sure your banner updates ad_user_data before the form submit event fires, and send the consent choice you recorded with each lead. The Consent Mode v2 explainer covers the mechanics.

8. It’s too early, or there are too few leads

Symptom. You changed the setup recently and the report hasn’t moved.

Cause. Google says imported conversion statistics take about 3 hours to show. Processing typically takes less than 12 hours, and up to 72 hours for GBRAID and WBRAID conversions. Leads uploaded more than 63 days after the last click are not imported. Google also says enhanced conversions are most helpful at 20 or more conversions a week, including organic ones.

Fix. Wait a few days after a change before judging it, and upload at least daily so leads stay inside the 63-day window.

How to check the tag on a live form

This takes about five minutes, and it settles cause 2 for good. From Google’s GTM guide:

1. In Google Tag Manager, click Preview and enter your site’s URL. Tag Assistant opens your site.
2. Fill out and submit your lead form.
3. In the Tag Assistant summary, the Google Ads User-Provided Data Event tag should be under Tags Fired. If it is under Tags Not Fired, fix its trigger.
4. Click the tag and check that it received the email or phone you typed.
5. For a network check, open Chrome developer tools, tick Preserve log, and submit again. Look for a request to google.com/pagead/form-data/ with an em parameter. That parameter holds the hashed user data.

If you use the Google tag without Tag Manager, Google points to Tag Assistant from your Google Ads account. For GTM, it suggests preview mode, then the Variables tab of the conversion tag, where the Google Ads Enhanced Conversions object shows what was sent.

Decision checklist

Answer these in order. The first “no” is where to start.

1. 1Is enhanced conversions turned on under Goals, then Settings, then Customer data use, and not opted out on this conversion action?
2. 2Are the customer data terms accepted, from the manager account if one tracks your conversions?
3. 3Does the conversion action show “Check enhanced conversions”? If so, what do its diagnostics say?
4. 4Does the Google tag, or the GTM User-Provided Data Event tag, fire on the lead form submit?
5. 5Does that event carry the email or phone the visitor typed, on every form, browser and device?
6. 6Is ad_user_data granted when the form is submitted, and is consent filled in on your uploads?
7. 7Does each upload row include hashed email or phone, including rows without a GCLID?
8. 8Is the upload going through Data Manager or the Data Manager API, not a legacy file or a non-allowlisted API token?
9. 9Is it normalized and hashed the way Google asks, with no custom variables on rows that carry user identifiers?
10. 10Has it been a few days since the last change, with enough leads a week to read?

How this fits with the rest of your offline setup

Enhanced conversions for leads is one part of sending CRM outcomes back to ad platforms. Our guide to offline conversions compares match keys and upload windows across Google Ads, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn and TikTok. The enhanced conversions guide covers the tag setup for web and leads. Before you launch any change, run the tracking QA checklist.

A MetricMaven audit checks both sides of this: whether your tags collect user-provided data on your lead forms, and whether your CRM uploads carry it. To see what loads on your lead pages today, start with a Free Tracking Scan.