Vent: Google Ads conversion tracking was broken for 3 weeks and I didnt notice

I set up a new campaign for a client in early January and thought everything was fine. Turns out I had the Google tag firing twice on their site and it was double counting conversions. I only caught it when I noticed the cost per conversion dropped by half one day for no reason. Spent a full Saturday digging through Google Tag Manager and finally found the duplicate tag that some freelance dev added without telling me. The worst part is the client wasted about $1,200 on ads before I figured it out. Has anyone else dealt with sneaky tag issues like this and how do you catch them faster?

2 comments

2 Comments

sage_perry29d ago

That whole double tag nightmare sounds rough. I had something similar happen with Facebook pixel code. For me the issue was worse because the client had an old email provider that was also loading the pixel, and the tech guy swore he turned it off but it was still firing from some backup script. Took me two weeks to notice the conversions were way off. I caught it when I compared the raw data from their CRM against what Facebook showed and the numbers didnt match at all. Now I always set up a simple script to check for duplicate tags before I even start a campaign.

the_luna29d ago

Oh man @sage_perry you totally just described my life. I had a client who ran a Shopify store and their dev team had the Google tag hardcoded into the theme AND also loaded it through GTM without telling me. It took me forever to figure out because the conversion numbers looked fine at first but they were just doubled. I only caught it when I noticed their add to cart rate was way higher than what their actual checkout data showed. Now I use a free Chrome extension called Tag Assistant every time I launch anything new because I learned the hard way too.