How to Measure Leads in GA4 and Google Search Console

Know what each tool measures

Used together, they let you connect “people searching for furnace repair found this page” with “this page produced form submissions.”

Step one: decide what counts as a lead

Before touching settings, write down the actions that matter. For most service businesses:

• Contact or quote form submitted
• Phone number tapped on mobile (a call intent, not a confirmed call)
• Online booking completed
• Chat conversation started, if your chat tool can report it

Keep the list short. Scrolls, video plays, and page views can be useful engagement signals, but if they are counted alongside form submissions, your “lead” numbers become meaningless.

Step two: mark lead actions as key events in GA4

GA4 now uses the term key events for important actions you previously marked as conversions. According to Google’s help article About key events, the word “conversion” now refers to actions used to measure and optimize ad campaigns, a change made to align definitions across Google Ads and Analytics. In practice:

• Any event GA4 collects can be marked as a key event in Admin, on the Key events page.
• If you run Google Ads, you create a Google Ads conversion from a key event, which requires linking the accounts.
• Google Ads conversions appear in the Advertising section of GA4, not in the standard Reports section.

Older tutorials and screenshots still say “conversions” for what GA4 now calls key events. The concept is the same; the label changed.

Step three: make sure form submissions are recorded accurately

GA4’s enhanced measurement can automatically record form_start and form_submit events, as described in Google’s enhanced measurement help page. It is a convenient start, but there are caveats:

• The form parameters (form ID, name, destination) can only be used in reports after you register them as custom dimensions.
• Automatic detection depends on how your form is built. Forms that submit through JavaScript without reloading the page, or forms inside iframes, may not be detected reliably, and a failed submission can sometimes still register.
• Google’s help page reminds you to make sure no personally identifiable information, such as names or email addresses, is sent to Analytics.

More reliable options, in rough order of preference:

1. A thank-you page

   Redirect successful submissions to a confirmation URL and create a key event for views of that page. Simple and robust.

2. The form plugin’s success event

   Many WordPress form plugins fire a JavaScript event on successful submission. Use Google Tag Manager to send a custom generate_lead event when it fires.

3. Server-side confirmation

   For larger setups, record leads when the CRM receives them and reconcile that count with GA4.

Whatever you choose, submit a test form and confirm it appears in GA4’s realtime or DebugView reports before relying on the numbers.

Step four: track phone calls

For many local businesses the phone is the main lead channel, and it is the hardest to measure.

Step five: tag your campaigns with UTM parameters

GA4 assigns traffic to channels based on where it came from. Links in emails, social posts, QR codes, and printed materials often arrive with no clear source, and get lumped into “direct.” UTM parameters fix that. The common ones are:

• utm_source: where the traffic comes from, such as newsletter or facebook
• utm_medium: the type of channel, such as email, social, or print
• utm_campaign: the specific campaign, such as spring-ac-tuneup
• utm_content and utm_term: optional detail, such as which button or keyword

Agree on a naming convention and write it down; “Email,” “email,” and “e-mail” become three separate rows in reports. Do not add UTM tags to internal links on your own site, because doing so overwrites the visitor’s original source. Google Ads usually handles tagging automatically through auto-tagging when the accounts are linked.

Step six: handle consent properly

If your site uses a cookie banner, your measurement depends on how it connects to Google’s tags. Google’s consent mode documentation describes two approaches:

• Basic: Google tags do not load until the visitor interacts with the consent banner. If they decline, no data is sent.
• Advanced: tags load with default consent states. While consent is denied, cookieless signals are sent; full measurement begins once consent is granted.

Google uses modeling to estimate some activity from visitors who decline, with advanced mode supporting more detailed modeling. Either way, expect GA4 lead counts to be lower than the leads you actually receive. Which approach you need depends on the laws that apply to your visitors and your own privacy policy, so confirm with your legal advisor.

What Search Console can and cannot tell you

Search Console’s Performance report shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position for your pages in Google Search. It is the best source for understanding which searches bring people to your site. It has well-documented limits:

• Anonymized queries. Google’s Search Central post on performance data limits explains that queries issued by very few people are hidden for privacy. They count in chart totals but do not appear in the query table, so query rows will not add up to the total.
• Row limits. The interface shows and exports up to 1,000 rows. Larger sites need the API or bulk data export.
• Chart versus table totals. Google notes totals can differ because data is aggregated by property in charts and by page in some tables.
• No lead data. Search Console stops at the click. Leads come from GA4 or your CRM.
• AI features. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is included under the “Web” search type, and the separate Generative AI performance report shows impressions in those features for sites with enough data.

Linking Search Console to GA4 brings the Search Console reports into Analytics, so you can view organic landing pages alongside engagement. You still connect queries to leads indirectly: queries lead to landing pages, and landing pages lead to key events.

Putting it together: a monthly routine to measure leads

A simple monthly review for a service business: in GA4, check key events by channel and by landing page; in Search Console, check which queries and pages gained or lost clicks; then compare GA4 lead counts with what your team logged in the CRM. When the numbers disagree, and they always will a little, the CRM is closest to the truth about revenue, and GA4 is the best view of which pages and channels help.

If your tracking is patchy, our lead generation services include measurement setup, and our SEO services use Search Console data to decide which pages to improve. For forms that feed directly into follow-up, see CRM automation.