Hi, I'm Rudra Sharma, a performance marketer based in Lucknow.

Last week, I was helping a local e-commerce client. Their Google Ads conversions were showing only 60% of actual sales.

As a performance marketer, accurate tracking is my #1 priority. So I opened DevTools.

🔍 What I Found

Step 1 — Network Tab
I filtered by "googleadservices" and noticed the gclid parameter was dropping on the thank you page.

Step 2 — Console
I ran:
dataLayer.push({event: 'purchase'})

The event fired. So GTM was fine. The issue was elsewhere.

Step 3 — Application Tab → Cookies
The _gcl_au cookie was expiring too early because of server-side caching.

✅ The Fix

Disabled cache on the thank you page. Within 24 hours, tracking was accurate.

This is the kind of work I do daily — Rudhra Sharma, performance marketer from Lucknow.

If your tracking is broken, I can help.