How to Import Google Analytics 4 Conversions into Google Ads

Connecting your GA4 conversions to Google Ads helps you see the full story of your ad performance beyond just the last click. It feeds your campaigns richer data, enabling smarter bidding and better results. This article will walk you through exactly how to set up the import, step-by-step, and what to do once you’re done.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Why Should I Import GA4 Conversions into Google Ads?

You might already have a Google Ads conversion tag on your site, so why add another one? Using Google Analytics 4 as your conversion source offers several powerful advantages that make the effort worthwhile.

Get a Single Source of Truth

When you measure conversions in Google Ads and Google Analytics separately, you often end up with conflicting numbers. Which platform is right? This discrepancy happens because each platform uses slightly different attribution models and counts conversions at different times. By importing conversions from GA4, you designate it as the single source for your conversion data. This eliminates reporting conflicts and ensures everyone on your team is looking at the same numbers, creating a unified and more trustworthy reporting setup.

Unlock Richer Conversion Data

Standard Google Ads conversions typically track a page load, like a thank-you page after a form submission. GA4, on the other hand, is built on a flexible event-based model. This means you can define more nuanced and meaningful actions as conversions, such as:

• A user clicking a specific call-to-action button.
• Someone scrolling 75% of the way down a key landing page.
• A visitor spending more than three minutes on your pricing page.
• A new user signing up for an account.

These detailed events give you a far more accurate picture of engagement and success than a simple page view can. You can track what's actually driving value for your business at a more granular level, and then you can send these events back to where your ad spend is coming from: Google Ads.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Power Up Google's Smart Bidding

Google Ads' automated bidding strategies, like Target CPA and Maximize Conversions, are only as smart as the data you feed them. They thrive on large volumes of high-quality conversion data. When you import richer, more accurate conversion events from GA4, you provide the bidding algorithms with better signals. This helps Google learn who your ideal customers are faster and more effectively, allowing it to better optimize your ad delivery to find more people who are likely to take those valuable actions on your site.

Before You Start: A 3-Step Prerequisite Checklist

Before you dive into the import process, there are a few things you need to have in place. Getting these sorted out now will save you from hitting any roadblocks later.

1. Link Your Google Ads and GA4 Accounts First

Your data can't flow between the two platforms if they aren’t connected. Linking your accounts is essential for the import process and enables GA4 to automatically attribute sessions to your Google Ads campaigns.

How to Link Your Accounts from within Google Analytics:

• In GA4, go to Admin (the gear icon at the bottom-left).
• In the Property column, click on Google Ads Links under Product Links.
• Click the blue Link button, then click Choose Google Ads accounts.
• Select the Google Ads account(s) you want to link and click Confirm.
• On the next screen, ensure that Enable Personalized Advertising is toggled on. Don't touch any other settings unless you know what you're doing. Just leave auto-tagging enabled for now (we'll cover why in the next step).
• Click Next, then Submit.

2. Make Sure Auto-Tagging Is Enabled in Google Ads

Auto-tagging is a non-negotiable feature for this process. When it’s turned on, Google Ads automatically adds a unique parameter (the GCLID, or "Google Click Identifier") to the end of your destination URLs. When a user clicks your ad, this unique identifier is sent to your GA4 property where it's tracked until a conversion is reached. When GA4 attributes that conversion to the user with the identifying GCLID parameter, it sends the information back to your Google Ads account where your reporting dashboard can be updated automatically. Without this parameter, Google will have a hard time giving your campaigns credit for conversions. Here’s how you check in case you (or a teammate) have disabled it:

• In Google Ads, navigate to Settings > Account Settings.
• You'll see a section called Auto-tagging. Make sure the box next to “Tag the URL that people click through from my ad” is checked.
• Just click Save if you made any changes.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

3. Flag Your GA4 Events as Conversions

Just creating an event in GA4 doesn't automatically make it a conversion. You have to explicitly tell GA4 which events you consider valuable and want to track as conversions. To make your life easier, you'll want to finish this simple task before you start your import.

• In GA4, go to Admin.
• In the Property column, click on Events.
• You'll see a list of all events being tracked on your website. Scroll down and find the events you want to track as conversions in Ads (like "purchase," "form_submission," or "generate_lead").
• In the last column of your events list, titled "Mark as conversion," just flip the toggle switch for your selected conversion events so it turns blue.

That's it - easy! The newly selected conversion events will now automatically begin appearing in your GA4 Conversions report, and more importantly, they'll be available for your Google Ads import.

How to Import GA4 Conversions: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you have confirmed all of the prerequisites, you're actually ready to get started. Here are the simple steps to get your GA4 conversion data flowing into Google Ads:

Step 1: Start the Import Process in Google Ads

• In your Google Ads account, click on Tools and Settings (the wrench icon at the top-right).
• Under Measurement, click Conversions.
• Click the blue + button, then select Import.

Step 2: Select Your Data Source

• Click on Google Analytics 4 properties, then select the types of conversions you want to import. You'll likely want to select "Web."
• Click Continue.

Step 3: Import the Conversions

• After clicking continue, Google Ads will show you a list of conversion events that are available for import. These are events you've already flagged as conversions in GA4.
• Scroll through the list and check the boxes next to the events you want to track in Google Ads.
• Click Import and Continue.

Step 4: Verify and Finalize the Import

• After hitting "Import and Continue," you'll see a success message confirming that the import was successful.
• You'll then see the imported conversions in your Conversion Actions summary screen. Click Done.

After the Import - What's Next?

Following the import process is not the end. It's important to integrate the newly imported data into your workflow to get the most out of your newly linked product data:

Customize Conversion Settings

• Set the primary conversion in your account to match the most important action you want to track. You may have Google Ads conversions counted as secondary actions, and now you have imported "form_submission" conversions from GA4.
• To do this, go through the settings and set primary or secondary actions based on their importance. Primary actions are used in Google's Automated Bidding, while secondary actions can inform you without affecting Google's decisions.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Update Your Bidding Strategy

• If you're using an automated bidding strategy like Target CPA or Maximize Conversions, you'll want to make sure your campaigns are optimizing for the newly imported actions. You can adjust this by going into your campaign settings, selecting your strategy, and choosing the desired conversion actions.

Add the New Conversions to Your Reporting Columns

Finally, to analyze the performance of your new conversions, you need to add them to your Google Ads reports. If you don't do this, you'll still be looking at old data and won't be able to see the impact of your newly imported GA4 conversions.

• Go to the Campaigns section in your Google Ads account.
• Above the metrics table, click on the Columns icon, then Modify columns.
• Expand the Conversions section. You will see a list of all your available conversion actions.
• Select the GA4 conversions you just imported. You can also add metrics like Conversion Rate (Conv. rate), Cost per Conversion (Cost / conv.), and Conversion Value (Conv. value).
• Click on Apply.

Once your columns have been updated, you will see your freshly imported GA4 conversions showing up alongside your other key performance metrics, letting you accurately measure and optimize campaign performance.

Final Thoughts

Importing your GA4 conversions isn’t just adding redundancy in tracking — it’s about enriching your Google Ads data so you can make more informed campaign decisions and get more bang for your ad spend. By using Google Analytics as the source for your campaign data, you create a unified, consistent reporting view that will eliminate discrepancies and create a stronger foundation for your bidding strategy.

Of course, getting Google Ads and Google Analytics talking to each other is just one part of the data-wrangling puzzle. We know unifying all your marketing data across different platforms — from social media to CRM and email platforms — can feel like a full-time job in itself. With Graphed , you can connect your Google Analytics GA4 and dozens of other tools in a single click, using our planning engine to generate instant, real-time dashboards. This frees up your time from the endless cycle of CSV exports and spreadsheet wrangling. We believe that data shouldn't be hard to manage, and Graphed is the AI data analytics service everyone needs to streamline their data workflows.