Conversion linker tags are used to help tags measure click data so that conversions are measured effectively. Deploy a conversion linker tag on any page where visitors may land after they click an ad or promotion.
When people click on your ads, the URL of the conversion page on your website typically includes information about the click. When a site visitor takes an action that you’ve tagged as a conversion (e.g. when a Google Ads conversion tag is fired), the click information is used to associate that conversion with the click that brought the visitors to your site.
The conversion linker tag automatically detects the ad click information in your conversion page URLs, and stores this information in first-party cookies and browser local storage on your domain for web pages, and passes the data in URLs for AMP pages. If you use a conversion linker tag with Google Marketing Platform products, the conversion linker tag may also store unique identifiers in those cookies.
Basic setup
To set up a conversion linker tag:
- Click Tags
New.
- Click Tag Configuration and select Conversion Linker.
- Select a trigger. In most cases, you should use a trigger that fires on all page views, or on specific page views where site visitors will land after an ad is clicked.
- Save and publish your tag configuration.
New.Instances of conversion linker tags for web and AMP containers will have the additional option to link across domains and web containers will also include the ability to override cookie settings.
Link across domains
Conversion linker tags in web and AMP containers can be configured to link across domains for cases where you have the landing pages and conversion pages on multiple domains. When you select this option, hyperlinks that point to a linked domain will have a linker parameter appended to the URL. A destination domain with a compatible linker tag will check inbound URLs for linker parameters. If a valid linker parameter is found, a 1st party measurement cookie is extracted and stored. Learn more.
To configure the conversion linker tag to work with multiple domains:
- Select Enable linking across domains. This setting will enable this tag to handle incoming links that have a linker parameter.
- Optional, but recommended for web and AMP containers: In Auto Link Domains, enter a list of domains that should be linked with this tag. Any links that point to a domain listed in this field will have a linker parameter appended to the URL.
- Optional for web containers: To link forms, set Decorate Forms to true.
- Optional for web containers: If you need to tell Tag Manager to read the unique parameter from a fragment (
#) instead of a standard query (?), set URL Position to Fragment. Otherwise, leave this option set to the default Query Parameter option.
Override cookie settings (advanced)
You may need to override some cookie settings in cases where you already have cookies with the same names, you need to have multiple sets of cookies, or when you don’t want ad click info from one subdomain of your website to be available for conversions on another subdomain. For these cases, use the override cookie settings feature.
The conversion linker tag sets ad click information in cookies named _gcl_*, such as _gcl_aw, and _gcl_gs. These cookies use the top-most domain and root level path. If you need to override any of these settings, you can do so in Linker Options. In addition, conversion linker tags store ad click information in Browser Local Storage (key: _gcl_ls).
When you select the Override cookie settings checkbox, text fields for Name prefix, Domain, and Path will appear:
- Name: This is the prefix used as part of the cookie names.The default prefix name is _gcl. For example, if you change the Name field to _gcl2, the Conversion Linker tag will set cookies named _gcl2_aw and _gcl2_dc. If you change the prefix of the cookie names, any tags that read ad click info from these cookies (e.g. Google Ads conversion tags) must also be configured to use the same prefix.
- Domain: This is the domain of your website on which the first-party cookies should be set. By default, a conversion linker tag will use the highest level domain on which it can set cookies. For example, if your website address is blog.example.com, a conversion linker tag will set the cookie domain to example.com. Only set this field if you need to limit the cookies to a lower-level domain.
- Path: This is the path used to set the cookies. By default, the cookie path will be the root level of the domain. Only set this field if you need to limit the cookies to a subdirectory of a domain.
You can also edit how tags work with first-party cookies set by conversion linker tags: These tags will offer two additional configuration options in the Conversion Linking section:
- Enable Conversion Linking: By default, all tags that read data set by the conversion linker tag have "Enable Conversion Linking" set to true. Set this value to false if you need to disable the tag's ability to work with Conversion Linker tags.
- Cookie Prefix: If you have changed the cookie name prefix in a conversion linker tag, add that same prefix in this field so that the tag can read data from the correct cookie.