If you are confused about whether GA4 has conversions or key events, you are not behind – Google changed the words in 2024 and left two products speaking slightly different languages. Here is what each term means now and which one to use where.

What changed

In March 2024, GA4 renamed the Conversions metric to Key events. The word conversion did not disappear; it moved. A conversion is now specifically a key event you import into Google Ads to measure and optimize campaigns. Nothing about your tracking changed, and existing conversion events became key events automatically, so no re-tagging was needed.

The two terms, point by point

The difference lives in five places:

  • Where it lives – key event: in GA4; conversion: in Google Ads.
  • What it is – key event: an event you marked as important; conversion: a key event imported into Ads.
  • Purpose – key event: measuring behavior and reporting; conversion: bidding and campaign optimization.
  • Counting – key event: by event date under GA4 attribution; conversion: by click date in the Ads window, with modeling.
  • Set up in – key event: Admin, Key events; conversion: Google Ads, via the GA4 link.

Why the counts never match

The most common support ticket after the rename is that the GA4 key-event count and the Google Ads conversion count for the same purchases disagree. That is expected, not a bug. GA4 counts the key event on the day it happened under its own attribution, while Google Ads counts the imported conversion by the date of the ad click inside its conversion window, applies its own counting rules, and layers modeled conversions on top.

Which to use when

Match the term to the job:

  • Use GA4 key events for on-site measurement: reporting, funnels, audiences, and understanding behavior across all traffic.
  • Use Google Ads conversions for campaign bidding and optimization, since that is the number the algorithm acts on.
  • Do not compare the two counts one to one, or reconcile them expecting a match; treat each as correct in its own context.

Practical setup

The workflow is simple once the language is clear. Mark the events that matter as key events in GA4, link GA4 to Google Ads, and import the key events you want to bid on as conversions in Ads. That keeps measurement broad in GA4 and optimization focused in Ads.

You were not behind for being confused, because Google genuinely split one word across two tools in 2024. Key events are GA4's measure of what matters on site; conversions are the subset you hand to Google Ads to bid on, counted by different rules. Use each in its own home, expect the totals to differ, and the two languages stop being a contradiction and start being a clean division of labor.

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