Pass the gclid

The final URL is the page the ad opens. A tracking template is a separate pattern Google fills in on the click, and a final URL suffix is extra parameters stuck onto that landing page. You can save either one at the account level, the campaign level, or the ad group level.

Google's tracking template article describes parallel tracking: the visitor goes to the final URL while the template address loads in the background. The suffix article shows the same split. The person lands on the page with the suffix attached, and measurement runs behind that visit. In Google's illustration the visitor arrives at an address that already includes the suffix x=y.

Edits to a template take 24 to 48 hours to show up in serving. The setup article says a third-party click tracker should follow that provider's format. Voluum, RedTrack, and ClickMagick each publish their own.

This is the tracking template example from the setup article. On a click, the four parameters are replaced with the campaign, the ad group, the keyword, and the device.

{lpurl}?campaignid={campaignid}&adgroupid={adgroupid}&keyword={keyword}&device={device}

A redirect through your tracker uses the same structure: an https address that still contains {lpurl}, with any extra parameters after it. Tick campaign, ad group, keyword, or device when you want those ValueTrack parameters added.

RedTrack's Google Ads page requires a custom tracking domain. Performance Max parameters go in the final URL suffix. Other campaigns use the tracking template field. The public page does not print the parameter string itself. Create the Google Ads traffic channel, then copy the campaign Tracking field into the form. The form rejects an http address, and it rejects a template that has no {lpurl}.

ClickMagick does not use that redirect pattern. Leave the advertised page in the final URL field. Auto-tagging supplies the click id, and the tracking code on that page reads it. The conversion article sends a Google conversion when the click carried gclid or wbraid, unless Enhanced Conversions is on and the click has an email or a phone number. Inbound and outbound network addresses are assembled in the postback URL builder. The ClickMagick review and the RedTrack review cover the plans.

The failure buyers describe is an id that shows on Google's redirect and is missing on the page the tracker records. A single-page app that reloads the landing URL and drops the query string does that. Anything else that strips parameters between the ad click and the script has the same result.

Keep every character, including its case. The import setup says the GCLID is case sensitive, so a lowercased copy will not match the click.