Enhanced conversions in Google Ads: how they work

Enhanced conversions send hashed customer data along with a conversion, such as an email address or phone number, which Google compares with signed-in Google accounts ^[1]. That way Google Ads can link a purchase or lead to an ad even when a cookie or click ID is missing. Hashing is pseudonymisation, though, not anonymisation: only send data after consent, with ad_user_data set to granted.

Since June 2026 it has been a single setting for web and for leads ^[2]. Whether you set it up yourself or have a Google Analytics agency do it, know both sides: what it delivers and what it means legally.

Web or leads: which variant do you need?

For B2B companies and service providers with a long sales cycle, the leads variant is often the most interesting: Google Ads then learns from leads that became customers, not from every form. Google calls it an enhanced version of importing offline conversions. Where possible, also send the GCLID; if you don't use a tag, it is even required ^[3].

How to turn on enhanced conversions

1. Turn on the feature at account level. In Google Ads, go to Goals › Settings, Customer data use panel, and tick Turn on enhanced conversions ^[2].
2. Don't let the second tickbox come along automatically. Turn on conversion-based customer lists lets Google create customer lists from your conversion data ^[2]. That is a different purpose from measurement: decide on it deliberately and check that your privacy policy covers it.
3. Clean up old settings per conversion action. They take precedence over the account-level setting ^[4].
4. Make sure the data is there when the conversion tag fires, in the form or on the confirmation page.
5. Take care of consent. Google calls ad_user_data required for enhanced conversions ^[5], and the Google tag only collects the data if the necessary consent is set to granted ^[6].
6. Check your volume. According to Google, enhanced conversions are most useful from 20 conversions per week, organic and paid combined ^[7].

You supply the data in one of three ways. Automatic detection by the Google tag takes little work, but can read the wrong field, such as the newsletter field in your footer; exclude such fields ^[4]. CSS selectors point to the right field themselves, but break when your web developer changes the form.

The most accurate is a code snippet or the data layer via Tag Manager. Google calls it the method that consistently delivers correctly formatted data, and gives that data priority over automatically detected data ^[4].

If you hash yourself, normalise first the way Google asks: remove leading and trailing spaces, put everything in lowercase, remove the dots before the domain for gmail.com and googlemail.com, and write phone numbers in E.164, such as +32470123456. Then hash with SHA-256 ^[1]. One capital letter or space too many gives a different hash, and then Google finds no match.

What do the privacy rules say?

Hashing is pseudonymisation. According to the European regulators, pseudonymised data that can be linked to a person with additional information remains personal data ^[8]. They give the example of a SHA-256 hash of a name themselves: anyone who knows the method hashes the names they already have and compares ^[8].

The EDPB also counts unique identifiers derived from an email address or phone number and hashed on the device as falling under Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive ^[9]. That is the same rule that governs consent for cookies and pixels in Belgium. Google itself requires you to inform customers, ask for consent where the law requires it and comply with the EU user consent policy ^[10].

In practice: enhanced conversions only for visitors who consented to advertising, a mention in your privacy and cookie policy, and a deliberate choice about customer lists. How to set up ad_user_data is explained in Consent Mode v2 in practice: basic or advanced?. Meta has a similar approach, explained in Meta Pixel or Conversions API? Why you need both.

What changed in 2026?

Most explanations online date from before these changes ^{[2], [3]}:

• April 2026: Google Ads accepts customer data simultaneously via website tags, Data Manager and API connections.
• June 2026: web and leads become one feature with one switch. Anyone who had already accepted the customer data terms is migrated automatically.
• 15 June 2026: uploads of offline conversions and of enhanced conversions for leads go through the Data Manager API. In the Google Ads API they are blocked, with a temporary exception for connections that still sent requests between January and June 2026.

If your CRM uploads leads to Google Ads via a custom integration, check whether it already runs through Data Manager.

Testing, and what to expect

In Google Ads, go to Goals › Summary. A conversion action with a problem gets the status Check enhanced conversions, and the Diagnostics tab shows the status across all your actions: Excellent, Needs attention or No recent data ^[7]. Below 20 conversions in 7 days the report shows no notifications, and you see the impact on your reporting after about 30 days ^{[4], [7]}.

In Tag Manager's preview mode, also check that the right field is read. Test with a rejected banner as well: then no customer data may leave.

How much you recover depends on how many conversions come in today without a click ID, how many customers leave an email address and how many visitors give consent. Measure it over at least a month against your own orders or leads. A lead that counts twice keeps counting twice (see GA4 key events and conversions), and it won't make GA4 and Google Ads match (see Why GA4 and Google Ads show different numbers).

Not sure whether your conversion measurement and consent work well together? The free tracking audit checks whether your banner passes the consent signals correctly, whether conversions count only once and how GA4 and Google Ads are linked.