Question from Reddit:
Hi there,
Recently I’ve noticed something weird happening to the conversion tracking of my ads.
Namely, the (purchase) conversions of one of my campaigns is counting single purchases double or even up to 7 times. All the while the conversion value indicates only a single purchase or none.
Funny enough, I am using the same conversion goal for other campaigns – and these are tracking fine.
Conversions are tracked via a GAds Conversion Tag in GTM, I’ved tested the tracking again and it seems to work fine in debug mode.
I’ve searched and searched but I can’t find any solution. I am also using the GTM4WP plugin for installing GTM and pushing the DataLayer, perhaps this plugin is causing issues.
Anyway, let me know if you have any guesses for as to why this is happening.
Thanks!
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
Your issue of a single purchase conversion counting up to seven times, while the conversion value remains correct or is missing, is a classic problem of the Google Ads Conversion Tag firing multiple times.
This usually happens on the thank you page due to a faulty trigger in GTM, where the tag fires not just on the initial page load but also on various subsequent events or history changes, particularly if your site is an inadvertent Single Page Application (SPA) or if the GTM4WP plugin is set up to aggressively push dataLayer events.
The quick fix is to check your GTM trigger to ensure it only fires on the first unique page view event.
The best long-term solution, however, is to switch to a server-side tracking architecture using the Google Ads API and a server-side container hosted on Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
The long answer is:
It’s understandable that this issue is frustrating, especially since the same conversion goal is tracking correctly for other campaigns, and your debug mode tests appear normal.
The problem isn’t with the conversion goal itself, but with the trigger logic for the Google Ads Conversion Tag.
The fact that the conversion value often remains a single purchase, or none, strongly indicates that the duplicate events are being sent without a unique transaction_id or that the tag is firing so rapidly that Google Ads’ client-side deduplication logic is failing to keep up, but it only fully processes the conversion value from one of the fires.
Your guess about the GTM4WP plugin is relevant, as its function is to push a robust dataLayer, and if its settings for page view events or history changes are too broad, it could be causing GTM to trigger the purchase event multiple times.
The immediate action should be to go into your GTM container and modify the trigger for the Google Ads Conversion Tag.
If it’s a simple Page View trigger, change it to a Custom Event trigger that only fires on a unique purchase event pushed by your dataLayer, and add an additional condition that checks for a missing or non-duplicate transaction ID in a cookie.
However, this is a client-side bandage that can still fail due to user behavior, browser restrictions, or plugin updates.
The truly reliable and permanent solution is to implement server-side tracking using the Google Ads API and a server-side container hosted on a service like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
In this approach, the moment a user completes a purchase, your website’s backend would send a single, definitive purchase event directly to your server container.
This container then uses the Google Ads API to send the conversion back to Google Ads.
Because the data originates from your secure server environment and includes the necessary unique transaction_id, you gain absolute control over deduplication.
Your server container will only process and send one purchase event per unique transaction ID, entirely bypassing the client-side issues with multiple page reloads, faulty GTM triggers, or interference from plugins like GTM4WP.
This ensures accurate one-to-one conversion reporting, solving your duplicate conversion problem for good.
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