Enhanced conversions: what they fix, what they leak, how to turn them on
Recover the Google Ads conversions that cookies quietly lose, and know exactly what customer data you're sending Google in exchange. What enhanced conversions fix, what they leak, who should skip them, and the 2026 settings merge most guides predate.
Turning on enhanced conversions takes one toggle and about ten minutes. Explaining to whoever owns privacy what just started flowing to Google takes longer, and that is the part worth getting right. Enhanced conversions send a hashed version of first-party data you already collect (email, phone, name) with your Google Ads conversion tag, so Google can match conversions that cookie-based tracking misses against signed-in accounts. The trade in one line: hashed customer PII flows to Google, and in exchange you recover attribution that ITP, cookie loss, and cross-device journeys were silently deleting.
So this page starts with the mechanism: what actually gets sent, what it leaks, and only then which toggle to flip.
#What they fix: the unattributed-conversion gap
A growing share of your real conversions arrive with no readable cookie attached. Safari's ITP caps JavaScript-set cookies at 7 days, so a click-Tuesday-buy-next-Friday Safari journey loses its thread. Users click on a phone and convert on a laptop. Consent choices and blockers strip identifiers before the conversion page ever loads. In every one of those cases the conversion happens and Google Ads can't tie it to the click: it just quietly doesn't appear, and Smart Bidding learns from a dataset with a bite taken out of it.
Enhanced conversions close the gap with a second match key: not the cookie, but the customer. If the person who converted is signed in to Google anywhere, a hashed email is enough to reconnect conversion to click, no cookie required (Google's overview).
#How the hashing actually works
Your customer's email never leaves the page in readable form. The sequence, as we implemented it on our own site:
The load-bearing detail is where hashing happens: inside the tag, in the browser, before transmission. Google receives a SHA-256 digest, matches it against its own (also hashed) signed-in account data, attributes the conversion, and per its documentation uses the data for the matching purpose. One paragraph for your DPO: "we send a one-way hash of data the customer already gave us, computed client-side, to recover ad attribution; no new plaintext PII leaves our site."
#What they leak: the honest section
"Hashed" is not "anonymous," and you should make this trade with open eyes. Three things are true at once. First, what Google receives is a stable pseudonymous identifier for your customer: the same email always produces the same hash, which is exactly what makes matching work, and exactly what makes it more than nothing. Second, you are enriching Google's picture of your customer relationships: Google learns that this person converted with you, information it didn't have when the cookie died. Third, none of this is exempt from consent: enhanced conversions ride on the same consent state as the rest of your measurement, and in consent-mode regions that state gates whether the data flows at all (Consent Mode v2 without losing your signal).
Our position: for most advertisers the trade is worth it. The data was already flowing to Google in the plaintext era of third-party cookies, and this is the narrower, hashed successor. But it's a decision, not a default: if your customer base is privacy-sensitive or your legal basis is shaky, solve that before flipping toggles.
#Should you turn them on?
| You | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Conversions capture an email/phone (purchases, sign-ups, leads) | Yes: the core case, and free recovered attribution |
| Safari/iOS-heavy or EU/consent-heavy traffic | Yes, especially: that's where the gap you're closing lives |
| Conversion pages capture no user data (anonymous content goals) | No: nothing to hash, so the feature is inert |
| Leads close in a CRM weeks later | Yes, and the leads variant is the bigger win (Enhanced conversions for leads: CRM matching for B2B) |
| Privacy posture forbids PII-derived data to ad platforms | No: respect it, and measure with what's left |
#Setup path 1: account-level opt-in
The newest and fastest path: a single account-level setting enables enhanced conversions across eligible conversion actions, with per-action overrides kept (account-level enhanced conversions). New accounts get nudged into it; existing accounts should take it deliberately: it's also where the 2026 settings consolidation lands (below). Turning the setting on is half the job either way: the tag still has to find the data on your pages.
#Setup path 2: the Google tag or GTM, and why to pick manual
Both the Google tag path and the GTM path offer two ways to supply the data:
- Automatic detection scans your pages for fields that look like emails or phone numbers. It's the zero-effort option, and it's fragile in exactly the way zero-effort scanning is: a redesign, a renamed field, or an unusual checkout layout silently degrades your match rate, and nothing tells you.
- Manual mapping: CSS selectors or JavaScript variables (in GTM, a user-provided data variable) pointing at exactly where the email lives. Ten more minutes of setup, deterministic behavior, survives redesigns you control, and breaks visibly when the selector goes stale.
Pick manual. Match-rate stability is the entire point of the feature, and automatic detection makes your match rate hostage to whoever edits the checkout template next.
#GA4 enhanced conversions vs Google Ads enhanced conversions
Different features, one confusing name. Google Ads enhanced conversions (this page) attach hashed user data to ad conversion tracking so Google Ads can recover attribution. GA4 has a separate user-provided data capability that improves GA4's own measurement and feeds Google Ads only via the GA4→Ads link. If your conversions import from GA4, configure user-provided data there; if you tag conversions directly (the setup this cluster recommends, and Google Ads conversion tracking: setup and the 7 ways it silently breaks covers why), configure enhanced conversions in Google Ads. Doing both is fine; confusing one for the other leaves a gap where you think you're covered.
#The 2026 changes: one setting, and Data Manager as the intake
Two shifts most page-one guides predate, both documented on Google's account-level settings page: the previously separate web and leads flavors of enhanced conversions are merging into a single account-level setting, and Data Manager (with its API) becomes the intake path for user-provided data: the same consolidation that moved offline imports, as of April 2026. What to do now: prefer the account-level setting over per-action toggles, and build any new integration against Data Manager rather than legacy endpoints, the same cutover logic as Offline conversion tracking: send CRM deals back to Google Ads, which lives it in detail.
#Verify it's working
Enhanced conversions fail quietly, so verification is a diagnostics habit, not a launch check:
- Conversion diagnostics (Google Ads → Conversions → the action → Diagnostics): the enhanced conversions section should report the feature active and receiving data: it's also where Google surfaces implementation warnings.
- Match quality: watch the trend, not the day-one number. A healthy setup holds steady; a decaying line means a selector went stale or a form changed, the same silent-degradation pattern as every capture problem in this cluster.
- Recovered-conversion sanity: expect a modest lift in attributed conversions after enabling, concentrated where cookies die (Safari, iOS). Representative magnitude (illustrative; the concentration is the tell): a mid-single-digit percent lift overall, with the recovered share running two to three times higher on Safari/iOS traffic than on Chrome. A huge overnight jump isn't recovery; it's double counting.
If it's set up and not recording, that's a known failure family, and Why your GA4 and Google Ads conversions don't match triages it alongside the other discrepancy causes, and The conversion tracking QA checklist: test it like you'd test code makes the check routine.
Two doors out of this page: if your conversions are leads that close in a CRM, Enhanced conversions for leads: CRM matching for B2B is the variant built for you; if your revenue truth lives offline entirely, the import pipeline is Offline conversion tracking: send CRM deals back to Google Ads. And the reason any of this matters upstream: recovered conversions are Smart Bidding inputs, and Smart Bidding is a signals problem: what the algorithm actually runs on is only as good as the data it receives.
Buron audits whether enhanced conversions are on, and whether they're actually matching, as part of its continuous tracking health checks, so a decaying match rate becomes a finding in your inbox, not a slow leak you discover at quarter end.
Frequently asked questions
What are enhanced conversions?
A Google Ads feature that sends hashed first-party data (email, phone, name) along with your conversion tag. Google matches the hash against signed-in Google accounts to attribute conversions that cookie-based tracking misses, recovering attribution lost to Safari's ITP, cookie expiry, and cross-device journeys.
Should I turn on enhanced conversions?
If you run Google Ads with conversions that capture an email or phone number, almost certainly yes: recovered attribution improves both reporting and Smart Bidding inputs at no media cost. The trade is that hashed customer PII flows to Google, so clear it with whoever owns privacy first, and mention it in your privacy policy.
How do I turn on enhanced conversions?
Enable the setting in Google Ads (account level, or per conversion action under the conversion settings), then give the tag the data: automatic detection, a manual CSS-selector or JavaScript-variable mapping in the Google tag or GTM, or the API. Verify in conversion diagnostics after a few days.
What are the four types of conversion?
In Google Ads terms: website conversions (purchases, sign-ups tracked by tag), app conversions, phone-call conversions, and imported/offline conversions uploaded from outside systems like a CRM. Enhanced conversions strengthen the website type; imports have their own pipeline.