Google Analytics 4 records page views out of the box. It does not know what a lead is until you tell it. For a business that lives on enquiries, that means a default installation measures almost nothing useful. This checklist fixes that.
1. Decide what counts as a lead
Write the list down before touching GA4. For most service businesses it is short:
- a contact or quote form submitted successfully
- a phone number tapped
- an email link clicked
- a call or meeting booked
- a chat conversation started
2. Track the successful submission, not the click
The most common mistake is firing an event when the submit button is clicked. A click is not a lead: the form may have failed validation.
Fire the event only when the form has actually been accepted, either on the success state or on a thank-you page. Use GA4's recommended event name, generate_lead, so reports and Google Ads understand it.
3. Mark them as key events
In GA4, the events that matter are flagged as key events (older guides call these conversions). Only flagged events appear in acquisition reports as results, and only they can be imported into Google Ads for bidding.
4. Send a value
Even an estimate helps. If one enquiry in five becomes a customer worth a known amount, give each lead a fifth of that value. It lets you compare channels by return rather than by volume.
5. Filter out yourself
Exclude internal traffic from your office and your developers, and keep test submissions out. Otherwise a busy week of testing looks like a record month.
6. Check cross-domain and booking tools
If your booking tool, checkout or payment page lives on another domain, configure cross-domain measurement. Otherwise every customer looks like a new visitor arriving from a referral, and the original source is lost.
7. Set up consent mode
Where consent is required, GA4 should respect the visitor's choice. Consent mode lets Google model the gap instead of simply losing the data, but it must be wired to your actual consent banner, not just switched on.
8. Link Google Ads and Search Console
Linking takes a few minutes and gives you search queries and ad cost next to your leads, in one place.
9. Reconcile against reality
Once a month, compare GA4's lead count with the enquiries that actually reached your inbox or CRM. They will never match exactly, but they should be close and move together. If they don't, fix that before trusting any other report.
The short version
Define leads, track success rather than clicks, flag them as key events, give them a value, and check the totals against real life. Everything else in GA4 is secondary to that.
Tracking health is one of the three things we look at in our free website audit.