Google Ads shows enquiries, but your sales team cannot find them in the CRM. Before changing the campaign, establish where those enquiries were submitted and where delivery stopped. A form completed inside an advert has a different route from a form completed on your website.
The immediate priorities are to preserve any retrievable submissions, give someone responsibility for answering them and repair the handover. Improving targeting will not fix a broken connection between an advertising form and your sales team.
Check whether the enquiry came from Google or your website
A Google Ads lead form asset lets someone submit their details directly through an advert. Google currently supports these assets in Search and Performance Max campaigns. Its lead form guidance explains how submissions can be downloaded, emailed or delivered through an integration.
Your website contact form is a separate collection route. If someone never reaches your website, checking the website form’s inbox or CRM integration will not establish what happened to their Google-hosted submission.
Ask the person managing the advertising account to identify the relevant campaign and lead form asset. Then ask the person managing the CRM which connection receives submissions from that form. Make the connection explicit rather than assuming that linking an advertising account to a CRM covers every enquiry route.
Confirm that the reported conversions are lead-form submissions
A campaign’s conversion total is not a list of missing customer records. Start by segmenting the report by conversion action. Google specifically recommends this when conversions are visible but the lead CSV is empty in its download instructions.
For the affected form, assemble a small set of evidence:
- The advertising account, campaign and form involved.
- The period when enquiries appear to have stopped arriving.
- Available submission records and their original times.
- The matching CRM records, including enquiries attached to existing contacts.
- The integration’s processing history and any failed delivery messages.
Compare equivalent periods and time zones. Search beyond the newest-contact view: an enquiry might have updated an existing person, landed in another pipeline or been assigned to a different owner. These are checks to investigate, not reasons to assume delivery succeeded.
The useful question is: can this particular submission be traced to a record and an accountable person? A total that looks plausible cannot answer that.
Preserve recoverable enquiries before the window closes
Google’s current retrieval limits distinguish between methods: manual CSV downloads cover the last 30 days, while the Google Ads API can export up to 60 days of lead data. Google stores these leads for 60 days. That longer storage period does not mean the ordinary CSV download covers the whole period.
Download the available submissions promptly into a controlled business location. If missing enquiries are older than the CSV window but still within 60 days, ask your integration provider or developer whether its existing authorised API connection can retrieve them. Do not assume a new connection will automatically backfill the gap, or promise recovery after Google’s retention window.
Use the correct form and export
Google’s download instructions place the export under Campaigns, then Assets, then the lead form summary. They offer CSV and CSV for CRM, and explain how to display removed forms using the Removed status filter. Downloading requires Standard or Admin access; manager accounts also need the relevant account ownership.
Keep an untouched recovery copy before importing anything. Record which form and period each export covers. If a form was replaced during the incident, investigate both versions: the currently active form alone may not account for earlier enquiries.
Give the sales team a controlled temporary follow-up process while the technical work continues. If nobody can monitor or recover incoming submissions, consider pausing the affected form or campaign until there is a dependable route.
Find the delivery method that is actually configured
Google’s CRM integration guidance describes CSV, email notifications, webhook delivery and API-based connections. It also distinguishes Zapier’s Google Ads API route from webhook integrations. Troubleshooting should follow the method your business uses.
For an email route, check the configured recipients and whether somebody monitors that mailbox. For a connector, inspect its latest run and whether it is connected to the intended account and form. For an API-based integration, ask whether retrieval ran successfully and which period it requested. For a webhook, trace the request through the receiving service into the CRM.
Write down the first stage where evidence stops. For example, a request received by an integration service with no corresponding CRM record points to a different investigation from a form whose connection targets the wrong campaign.
Check whether a recent form edit introduced a question that the CRM mapping cannot accept. Compare the submitted fields with the fields actually stored. This helps turn “the sync is broken” into a repair someone can test.
For webhooks, inspect acceptance and processing separately
A webhook sends submission data to a receiving URL. Google’s implementation specification says to validate the configured google_key, map submitted data using column_id and tolerate unrecognised fields. It identifies test submissions using is_test.
Its response rules distinguish success (200), non-retryable errors (4XX) and retryable server errors (5XX). Ask your developer to inspect the response and what happened afterwards. A successful response alone is insufficient evidence of a completed CRM handover.
For a custom integration, our recommendation is to acknowledge success only after the enquiry has been stored reliably or accepted into a durable processing queue. If processing happens later, the queue also needs failure alerts and a recovery route. Otherwise, a service can appear healthy while enquiries remain unfinished.
Keep troubleshooting records focused on delivery identifiers, times and outcomes. Avoid circulating webhook keys or full customer details in screenshots and shared issue threads.
Prove the repair inside the CRM
Google’s webhook testing guide provides a test button in the form setup. A green result indicates that the receiving system returned a successful response. Google explicitly says to verify that the CRM received and correctly parsed the sample payload as well.
Follow the test through the whole route. Confirm that the expected name, contact details and question answers arrive in the intended fields. Check the enquiry’s campaign or form reference, its assignment and any task that the sales team should receive.
If your integration deliberately keeps test submissions out of the live pipeline, inspect its test record or processing log instead. Do not weaken that separation merely to make a contact appear. Keep test data out of real customer follow-up and sales reporting.
The built-in test is one part of verification. Also reconcile the next genuine submissions against CRM records and their delivery times. A sample payload cannot exercise every answer combination or prove that a recurring retrieval job will continue running.
Recover the backlog without repeating customer contact
Repairing future delivery and recovering earlier enquiries are separate jobs. Work from the preserved submission records, compare them with the CRM and build a list of genuinely missing enquiries before importing the backlog.
Google’s CRM guidance warns that a lead can be delivered more than once and recommends deduplication using lead_id. Preserve that identifier wherever your integration exposes it. Check how your export and CRM import represent submission identity before relying on automatic duplicate handling.
Protect the customer’s existing history
A returning customer may already have a contact record but still have a new enquiry that needs handling. The recovery should preserve that new request without creating another person unnecessarily. Equally, replaying the same submission should not create another sales task or send the same acknowledgement again.
Before a bulk import, check which assignments, messages and workflows it will trigger. Test a small reviewed batch, verify the result and then process the remaining records. Retain the original submission time rather than presenting an older enquiry as if it arrived today.
Assign one person to review each recovered request and check whether it has already been answered elsewhere. Respond to its actual context. A delayed enquiry deserves a useful human follow-up, not an indiscriminate replay of the original automation.
Make missed delivery visible sooner
Give someone ownership of the route from advert to CRM. During recovery, reconcile submissions and accepted enquiries frequently enough to catch another gap before the retrieval window closes. Afterwards, choose a checking interval that suits the volume and urgency of your enquiries.
Include connection failures, unprocessed records and exceptions in that review. Recheck delivery whenever forms, field mappings or CRM workflows change. Keep a short recovery procedure so another person can retrieve and assign enquiries if the usual owner is unavailable.
Campaign management and enquiry handling need to work together. BuzzBoost’s paid media and email and CRM services cover those connected parts of the customer journey.
If Google Ads reports enquiries your team cannot trace, contact BuzzBoost. We can help identify where delivery stops, plan a controlled recovery and verify that new enquiries reach the right person.
Featured image: AI-generated editorial artwork, not a photograph of a real BuzzBoost office, client or result.
