Google Ads auto-tagging relies on passing the gclid through the URL. Sounds simple - until some quirks or redirects get in the way.
I’ve seen setups where intermediate landing pages, link shorteners, or even CRM forms quietly strip the parameter.
The result? A user clicks the ad, but GA4 and the CRM never see the gclid. From Google’s perspective, it’s like the click never happened.
Why does it matter?
Once the gclid or other id disappears without setting up the cookie, you lose the bridge between ad clicks and conversions. That breaks attribution in two ways:
• Some conversions look like “direct” or “organic” instead of paid.
• ROAS swings wildly — sometimes inflated, sometimes under-reported.
• Media budgets get optimized on bad data.
In practice, I’ve seen campaigns turned off because the CRM showed “no impact,” while GA4 was simply blind to the lost identifiers.
The bigger takeaway
If you don’t preserve and transmit the gclid, GoogleAds attribution is unreliable. The platform will keep reporting, but you’re not connecting the dots between spend and revenue. Numbers look official, but they aren’t anchored in reality.
When I audit these setups, I always recommend:
• Preserve the gclid server-side during redirects.• Store it in a session or cookie and pass it into GA4 and CRM.
• Monitor how often gclid gets dropped.
• Reconcile reports against CRM to see the truth.
Google Ads can only be trusted if the click-to-conversion chain survives intact. Without that, you’re optimizing on fiction.
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