In many projects, ads don’t point directly to the final site. They hit a landing page, pass through a redirect, or bounce between domains. Somewhere along that chain, the gclid parameter quietly disappears.
By the time the user reaches the main site, GA4 and the CRM see a visit — but not the click that drove it.
Why is this a problem?
Once the gclid is lost, so is the link between ad spend and conversions:
• Conversions never get tied back to GoogleAds.
• Attribution models underreport (or misreport) paid performance.
• Multi-step journeys across domains make the issue even worse.
I’ve seen businesses cut budgets for channels that “weren’t converting” — when in fact, their tracking broke mid-redirect.
Attribution depends on stable identifiers. If the gclid doesn’t survive the landing page and redirect maze, your data tells an incomplete story. The reports might look official, but they miss the customer’s actual path.
So how do you fix it?
The playbook I recommend:
• Have a consultation with some data agency
• Implement server-side forwarding of gclid through redirects.
• Store it in a session or database so it survives the full journey.
• Pass it into GA4 and CRM alongside conversion events.
• Test thoroughly across landing pages and multi-domain paths.
• Set up monitoring for gclid losses and add cross-domain measurement where needed.
Only when gclid travels safely from click to conversion can you trust Google Ads attribution. Without it, you’re optimizing on incomplete data.
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