25% Of Contacts From Google Ads Missing GCLID

Marketing & Content Hub Reporting & Analytics
1

Hey everyone!

Looking to find a solution to missing GCLIDs coming in from Paid Google Search. Currently finding that ~25% of inbound leads/contacts from this channel are missing them.

We’re still getting proper UTM Source/Medium/Campaign, Lead Source, and Last Lead Source that all line up to what’s coming in from Google, but a large proportion of them are missing the relevant GCLIDS. Hoping for a solution!

2

Hi @LT2,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community!

One possible reason is that the UTM code is not configured to properly track the campaign. I would recommend verifying that your ad tracking is set up as described in this help article.

I’ll add some of our community members to see if they have any insight.

Hi @webdew, @Aakar, @rikkilear, @JonPayne, @Jnix284, @louischausse, @Ben_M - Do you have any tips for @LT2?

I also saw that Support is included in your subscription. You may want to contact them as they would be able to provide real-time assistance for this matter, where you are able to share screenshots and specific contact examples.

Best,

Kristen

3

Hey Kristin!

Thanks for this - yes I’ve confirmed that the Tracking Template is set at the account level based on the support article.

For many of these leads that are missing the Gclid, we’re still getting our import fields like

utm_term={keyword}utm_source=adwordsutm_medium=utm_campaign={_utmcampaign}hsa_cam={campaignid}hsa_grp={adgroupid}

which is strange that we’re pulling all these fields from our tracking template, but the Gclid isn’t firing through. Can’t seem to figure it out.

Thanks!

4

Also having this same issue, did we get any answer or ideas on this since you posted?

5

This is a pretty common issue and there are a few potential causes.

The most likely culprit is that the GCLID gets lost between when someone clicks your ad and when they actually submit a form. If you’re not storing the GCLID in a first-party cookie when the visitor first lands, it gets stripped from the URL as they browse between pages on your site. So if someone clicks your Google Ad, lands on your homepage, then navigates to your contact page and fills out a form there, the GCLID won’t be captured.

The solution is to capture and store the GCLID the moment someone lands on your site, then write it into hidden fields on your forms when they submit. This way you’ll capture it even if they browse around or return later via a different channel.

You could write some custom JavaScript to handle the cookie storage and field population, or there are tools like Attributer.io that can handle this automatically for you (disclosure: I am the founder). It works with HubSpot Forms and many others, and you get the added benefit of capturing other click IDs like FBCLID and MSCLKID as well.

Aaron

P.s Another possibility is that some of the more privacy-focused browsers do strip the GCLID from the URL before a visitor even lands on your site. 25% seems very high though (these browsers don’t have anywhere near that level of market share). Safari also does it in private browsing mode, but again, seems high.