Google Ads reporting: how to read measurement and attribution correctly

A dashboard without these definitions can look precise and still tell the wrong story. Below you will find the definitions, the weekly format and the rule that leaves a metric which cannot be calculated visibly open instead of filling it in. A report that only arrives as a PDF after the monthly close shows deviations late; maitiq’s daily workflows generate evidence for each proposal on an ongoing basis, so a deviation can remain easier to explain while it can still be acted on.

Which decision should the report support?

Start with the decision, not the list of metrics:

• Is spending staying within the approved budget?
• Is a campaign generating valid enquiries?
• Which search queries deserve protection or exclusion?
• Is the conversion signal stable enough for automated bidding?
• Which changes need a review?
• Which accounts or campaigns are not comparable?

An operational weekly report may show early warning signals; an impact report needs a conversion period that has matured. A single table can show both as long as windows and limits are clearly separated; it does not inherently produce false alarms.

Which metric levels must stay separate?

For a B2B lead model there are five levels that must never merge into a single lead count:

1. impressions and clicks;
2. media spend;
3. valid enquiries or orders stored in your own system;
4. of which qualified transactions;
5. later revenue, provided it is systematically linked.

The source of record for an enquiry or order is the stored business transaction with its own ID – not a form step, a browser confirmation or a successful email delivery. Qualification at level 4 then follows as a documented qualification status recording the person, time, reason and version; a documented budget answer can contribute to the qualification criteria but is not sufficient by itself.

A metric is not invalid simply because its numerator and denominator use different units: CPA is cost per conversion, and the conversion rate relates conversions to eligible interactions. What matters is what the figure describes. For a share within a defined population, the numerator must be a subset of the denominator; that is the requirement for a share of distinct members, not for every percentage: percentage growth and relative ratios can be dimensionless without subset membership. For cost or value per event, currency and the counted event stay separate. For every such metric, the definition must include the counted event, the reference base with a denominator greater than zero, the population and the coverage. If the numerator counts several events per transaction, values above 100% are possible and are not a data error. If either side is missing, the report outputs “not calculable” and names the missing structure: qualification status, the link between transaction and subsequent step, a server-side record or a defined observation window with a delay buffer. It must neither show 0% nor estimate the link from browser data.

Why Google Ads and internal daily figures diverge

The primary conversion columns in Google Ads are dated by the time of the ad interaction – for Search and other click-based campaigns, the click time rather than the conversion time. Someone who clicks last week and converts this week appears in the previous week. Google also offers “by conversion time” columns, which report on the conversion time and therefore align better with third-party systems.

It follows directly that a completed period can show more conversions later than when it was first read. That is not an error but the reporting date convention. A report must therefore state which axis it uses and when it was created. A blanket percentage tolerance for discrepancies would be invented without your own measurement and has no place in reporting.

Other causes are processing delay, the model, the conversion window, consent, ad blockers, click filtering, timezone, import source, deduplication and differing lead definitions. A confirmed success-only browser event can reflect a stored valid form submission and must therefore not be dismissed universally as a diagnostic; on its own it is neither CRM qualification nor proof of causal revenue. Calls can also be leads. Consent and contractually agreed billing evidence must be assessed separately; denied ad signals do not create a universal legal rule that any browser observation cannot underpin any billing model. Whether the measurement chain holds up at all is clarified by the conversion tracking audit.

A reconciliation therefore starts with the actual event time of the business transaction. The storage and import times of the CRM system are added separately, because they lie later and reveal only the delay, not the conversion date. Add the retrieval time, expected maturity and last successful import, along with the actual column and time basis of the source: an ad interaction is not always a click but may be another eligible interaction. Only then can you tell whether a discrepancy is explainable in time, technically unresolved or defined incorrectly in business terms.

Which attribution model does the report use?

Google Ads currently supports two models: “Data-driven” and “Last click”. “Data-driven” is the default for most conversion actions and distributes credit based on the account data available. “Last click” gives full credit to the last ad clicked and to the keyword. The earlier models “First click”, “Linear”, “Time decay” and “Position-based” are no longer supported; affected actions were switched to “Data-driven”.

For reporting this means two things. First, reports that still show “Position-based” or “Time decay” describe a past state, not the current one. Second, “Data-driven” distributes credit within the available ad interactions: it does not measure incrementality and does not answer whether a result would have failed to materialise without the ad.

Document the following for each conversion action: model, switchover date, window, counting method, primary or secondary, and data source.

Conversion window and lookback window are two different settings

The conversion window is the period after an ad interaction during which a conversion is still counted at all. For clicks the default is 30 days, within a range of 1 to 90 days depending on the conversion source and campaign type. Engaged view defaults to 3 days and view-through to 1 day, both within a range of 1 to 30 days.

What matters for reporting: a change applies to conversions recorded from the time of the change onwards, including conversions that follow older ad interactions, and has no retroactive effect on conversions already recorded. Anything not counted under the old window is not added later. A comparison across the change date is therefore not like-for-like and must be flagged.

Separate from this is the lookback window of the attribution reports, at 30, 60 or 90 days (called “Lookback window” in the Google interface). It is measured backwards from the conversion and controls how far back the path analysis looks, not what ends up in the “Conversions” column. These reports show paths, assists, days and interactions up to the conversion; they are description, not proof of causality.

How should you choose comparison periods?

A robust weekly report uses completed account-local days and compares one window with a preceding window of equal length. If the windows differ in length because of differing coverage, they are not silently truncated and then called like-for-like; the report marks them as not comparable. If a report is uploaded rather than read from the account, both windows must be limited to the file’s actual coverage, and that limitation recorded as a visible note. Otherwise an old dataset appears as though it contained current zero days.

The anchor also matters: a window that ends on “today” describes an incomplete account day, not merely the freshness of the retrieval. Use completed days and show the data-as-of date. The trend logic therefore anchors on the selected completed account-local windows and on the fully covered days in the dataset; it does not silently shift the anchor to the data status of a single campaign metric. If the most recent fully covered day is older than expected, the report names that date as the data-as-of date.

For seasonal businesses a year-on-year comparison can be more useful. It requires the same definitions and tracking conditions; if goals, structure or conversion actions changed, it has limited validity.

Which dimensions must remain visible?

At minimum account, account currency, account timezone, campaign and campaign type, ad group, approved taxonomy, conversion action, period, data source, status and gaps.

Do not sum monetary amounts in different currencies without a separate, dated conversion process. Currency and timezone belong to the individual account and are taken from the account metadata. If an analysis covers more than one currency, it has no common currency: monetary aggregations report “not available” with a reason instead of producing a figure. The amounts in account currency remain the evidence; a separate, dated conversion may sit on top.

Not all campaign types have the same search term coverage. A Search finding is not a statement about the whole account if relevant costs lie outside that scope.

How are data gaps and zero values reported?

Coverage is visibly part of every metric; selected scope details may sit in linked footnotes as long as coverage and material gaps remain clearly recognisable. Expected and observed accounts, days, campaigns or source rows are shown, along with the reason for every gap. A partially covered window is neither extrapolated nor filled with zeros.

Use unambiguous states: “observed”, “observed zero”, “not available”, “delayed”, “partial” and “not comparable”. That lets a reader distinguish whether a value really was zero or simply could not be collected.

Two rules make this concrete. If conversions are zero there is no CPA: the field shows “not available” with that reason instead of a zero. If the previous-period value is zero there is no percentage delta. Both cases are statements about calculability, not about performance.

Primary and secondary conversion actions

Primary actions enter bidding and reporting according to the campaign’s goals. Secondary actions appear under “All conversions” and are used for bidding only when the campaign actually uses the custom goal concerned; under that exception they can also appear in “Conversions”.

Show the following in the report:

• the main conversion separately;
• each diagnostic action separately;
• no total that adds form starts, confirmations and stored transactions together as equivalent leads;
• import source and deduplication status;
• the reconciliation against the source system.

If GA4 and a direct import measure the same outcome, they must not both affect bidding. Choose exactly one primary source and treat the second as a comparison to check consistency. A server-side import needs duplicate protection, retry logic, a documented consent rule and a reconciliation against the source system; if any one of these is missing, bid management stays with the already verified source.

Which fields does the metric catalogue need?

Every entry additionally needs a display name, technical source, the person responsible, unit, granularity, filters, deduplication rule, window, the rule for zero and “not available”, refresh cadence and known limitations. A metric without a catalogue entry does not belong in a decision overview.

How should changes be recorded in the report?

Flag budget, bid goal, keyword, ad, landing page, tracking, conversion, auto-apply, access and agency changes as well as external events.

The Google Ads change history goes back two years and, in the user column, names the person, the API or the automated system that acted. It has documented gaps: not all changes at account level and not all interventions by Google representatives are listed, and with very many entities affected the view does not show every detail. It provides verifiable data, but is never proof of causality and never a substitute for your own approval record: a movement after a change may equally stem from seasonality, the auction or parallel interventions. How a finding becomes an approved, verified and documented change is described in the approval process for Google Ads changes.

What makes a weekly report decision-ready?

Recommended order:

1. data freshness and coverage;
2. goal and main conversion;
3. media spend and budget pacing;
4. main conversion as well as CPA or ROAS only where the definition fits;
5. campaign movements;
6. search term and negative findings;
7. tracking health;
8. open proposals and decisions;
9. changes carried out;
10. risks, responsibilities and next dates.

The header shows the data status, cost basis, account currency, account timezone, current and previous window, conversion action, model, interaction or conversion time, source and coverage. Each card carries observation, comparison, limit and status; below that sit decisions with the person responsible, a due date and an evidence reference. This prevents a warning from silently turning into an action.

“CPA increased” is an observation. “The conversion import failed; the last two days are not comparable” is a diagnosis. “Reduce budget” is a proposal that needs separate approval.

How maitiq delivers this reporting on an ongoing basis

The reporting follows the chosen reporting period, the coverage of the selected sources and the maturity of the period; the last seven completed account-local days together with the seven immediately before them are a supported default example, not a fixed requirement for every report. For the metrics available from stored account performance, proposal and action data it shows the definition, timeline, currency and coverage. External CRM and revenue linkage, the model and window of every conversion action, and other systems’ controls are not included automatically; they require separately supplied evidence or an arranged assessment. If conversions are zero, CPA stays shown as “not available” with a reason instead of zero. Routine proposal workflows run at the configured cadence, daily by default; reporting itself does not produce a new proposal for every metric each day. Proposals state the action, the rationale and supporting data, where applicable with the old and new value. Responsibility stays with you; an explicitly configured standing authority that is switched off by default can approve eligible proposals within the configured limits and implement them through the controlled, logged implementation process, with no fresh manual authorisation generally required after approval. Reporting itself never changes Google Ads. This is possible because AI-supported workflows take on the recurring account analysis and people make the decisions.

How is impact reported after a change?

First record the prior state and the expected observation. Then confirm technical success, wait for sufficient maturity, compare the same evaluation scope, name parallel changes and, where evidence is unclear, write “not conclusive”. For estimated effects the derivation must be visible; an expected impact is not an observed fact.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and how to read them

The sources are the six Google Ads Help pages below: platform documentation that explains features and limits. Information on how maitiq works is available at maitiq.com.

Google Ads access alone does not evidence the entire measurement chain. For website tracking, CRM quality or revenue attribution, the relevant systems and evidence are also included.

Have maitiq review your specific case.