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The toolkit

Google Ads Conversion Tracking Checklist for Therapists

A one page checklist a therapy practice can hand to whoever sets up the advertising. Work through it once and the numbers stay clean.

Fifteen checks Written for practice owners, not marketers Updated October 2026
Section one

Why this page exists

Standard advertising tracking was built for shops and booking sites, and it collects whatever it can reach. On a therapy site that includes the form someone filled in to ask for help. That form is a health record in waiting, and the tools holding it were never built for one.

When a review finds that, the usual fix is drastic. Every tag comes off the site at once. A practice that came to us lost its whole analytics stack on the day of a compliance scan. It ran blind for six weeks. The ads still spent money, and nobody could say which inquiries came from where.

The point. The line is not hard to hold. It only has to be drawn before the tracking is built, rather than after a review finds it.
Section two

The line: measure the event, never the person

An inquiry and the identity of the person behind it are two different things. The first is a number you can act on. The second is clinical information, and it does not belong in an advertising tool.

Safe to measure

  • That a form was submitted
  • That a call connected
  • Device type
  • Traffic source
  • Which page led to the inquiry
  • Which ad and which search term produced it
  • The count of inquiries in a period

Never sent to a tracking tool

  • Who submitted a form
  • What they wrote in it
  • An email address or a phone number
  • The fact that a named person is seeking therapy
  • Anything from a clinical record or a patient portal
The count of inquiries in a month tells you what you need. A name tells you nothing you can use.

This page is not legal advice

It describes how to keep clinical information out of the tracking tools. It cannot make a practice compliant, and your privacy officer or lawyer decides what your practice needs.
The point. Keep the setup inside this line and the risk goes down. The numbers stay just as useful.
Section three

The checklist

Work through the four moments in order. Each one is short, and the whole list takes about an hour the first time.

Moment one

Before anything is built

  • Confirm who owns the analytics account, and that the practice can sign in without asking someone else.
  • List every tag already firing on the site, and note what each one sends.
  • Decide the one action that counts as an inquiry.
  • Read the form fields, and flag anything a tag should not carry.
Moment two

When the tracking is built

  • Place the form submission tag on the thank you step, not on the button.
  • Record a call as connected, not as clicked.
  • Load the container in one place, so a later page change cannot leave a tag behind.
  • Turn off any setting that matches a form email address back to a person.
Moment three

The week it goes live

  • Land a test submission yourself, and confirm it appears in the report.
  • Call the practice number from your own phone, and confirm the call shows as connected.
  • Open the site on a phone, and check the container loads there.
  • Compare the inquiries in the report with the inquiries the practice actually received that week.
Moment four

The monthly review

  • Review the search terms and the inquiry count together each month.
  • Compare the inquiry count with the bookings the practice recorded over the same month.
  • Recheck the tag list after any change to the site or a form.
The point. The checklist is written to be run by the practice. It does not need a marketing team in the room.
Section four

The two mistakes we see most

Both mistakes make the report look better than the practice is. Both are quick to check.

Counting a button click

The tag sits on the submit button, so the report counts the tap. A person can tap, hit a validation error and leave. The report shows an inquiry the practice never received.

Counting a click to call

The tag fires when the number is tapped, and that tap may open a dialler that is never used. A call that connected lasts at least a minute on the line.

A tag on the button and a tag on the dialler both report an inquiry that never reached the practice.
The point. Count the finished action, not the tap before it.
Section five

You can do all of this yourself

None of it needs an agency. The account owner, whoever builds the site and an hour of patience are enough. The only step that cannot be skipped is the monthly read, because that is where a drifting tag shows up.

Run the calculator first, so you know what the numbers should be before you spend. The walk through guide covers the wider picture, and the blog holds the longer pieces.

Open the calculator Read the walk through guide Read the blog See the whole toolkit

Check the setup before the budget grows

We read an existing setup before we change anything. If a tag is sending more than a count, we say so and fix it.

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