Clarvivo

Free tool by Clarvivo · no login

Check whether your Google click ID survives to the conversion

Paste a paid landing page URL with a click ID on it. We trace the journey and check the thing that actually decides attribution: whether the Google tag captured it into the _gcl_aw cookie.

Paid landing page URL

Use a real ad URL, or append a test click ID like ?gclid=TeSt123. We check whether the Google tag captures it into the _gcl_aw cookie — which is what attribution actually reads.

This tool answers: Do GCLID, GBRAID and WBRAID survive to the conversion?

Enable JavaScript to run the check — the diagnosis itself is free and needs no account.

Why this happens

Most people debug click IDs by watching the address bar, and the address bar is the wrong place to look.

A GCLID is not meant to survive in the URL. The Google tag reads it once on landing and writes it into a first-party cookie called _gcl_aw. From that point on, everything that matters — conversion attribution, Enhanced Conversions, offline conversion uploads, the value your CRM stores against the lead — reads it from the cookie.

So watching the URL gives you the wrong answer in both directions. A click ID that vanishes on the first redirect is completely fine if the cookie was written first. A click ID that persists all the way to the thank-you page attributes nothing if the tag never ran, because there is no cookie for the conversion to match against.

That second case is the expensive one, and it is invisible: the URL looks perfect, the page loads, the campaign appears to work, and the conversions land nowhere.

Next checks

These answer the questions this one tends to raise.

How this check works

So you can trust the result — and your developer can verify it.

  1. We open the URL in a real browser

    The scan follows redirects and one internal link in headless Chromium, recording which click IDs survive each hop — gclid, gbraid, wbraid and dclid, plus the equivalents from Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, Reddit and LinkedIn.

  2. Then we check the cookie, which is the part that counts

    We look for _gcl_aw and its siblings after the journey. A click ID in the URL with no cookie behind it means Google Ads has nothing to attribute a conversion to, regardless of how healthy the URL looks.

  3. We grade URL loss by whether the cookie caught it first

    Losing the parameter from the URL after the cookie exists is normal and reported as such. Losing it with no cookie written is reported as a real failure. Treating both the same way is what makes manual debugging so misleading here.

  4. Other platforms are checked the same way

    fbclid needs _fbc, msclkid needs _uetmsclkid, ttclid needs _ttp. If the click ID arrived and the platform's cookie was never written, that platform's conversions and its server-side events have nothing to match on.

Common causes and fixes

The Google tag is not on the landing page
The most common cause. Paid landing pages are often built outside the main site or in a separate builder, and the tag that exists everywhere else never made it there.
Consent Mode is denying ad_storage
With ad_storage denied, the _gcl_aw cookie is not written at all. This is working as designed, but it means click-based attribution is unavailable for those visitors and you should be modelling rather than reading raw numbers.
The tag fires after a redirect that already stripped the parameter
If your landing page redirects before the tag runs, the tag reads a URL with no click ID on it and writes nothing. Order matters more than presence.
Auto-tagging is off in Google Ads
Without auto-tagging there is no GCLID to capture in the first place, and you are relying entirely on manual UTMs — which have no cookie fallback and are far more fragile.
The click ID never reaches your CRM
Even with the cookie written, a lead form that does not read it into a hidden field means the click ID never reaches your CRM, and offline conversion uploads have nothing to match on later.

Frequently asked questions

My GCLID disappears after a redirect. Is that a problem?
Only if no cookie captured it first. The Google tag is supposed to read the click ID on landing and store it in _gcl_aw; once that has happened the URL no longer matters. This tool checks both, so you get the answer rather than a guess.
What is the _gcl_aw cookie?
The first-party cookie Google's tag writes to carry the click ID past the query string. Conversion attribution, Enhanced Conversions and offline conversion imports all read from it. If it is not there, Google Ads cannot connect a conversion back to the click that produced it.
What is the difference between GCLID, GBRAID and WBRAID?
GCLID is the long-standing click identifier. GBRAID and WBRAID were introduced for iOS app and web traffic where privacy restrictions prevent a normal GCLID. All three are captured by the same mechanism, and this tool traces whichever your URL carries.
Can I test without a real ad click?
Yes. Append a fake one — ?gclid=TeSt123 — and the check works exactly the same, because it is testing whether your tag captures the parameter, not whether Google recognises the value.
How is this different from the UTM Loss Detector?
They fail differently. UTMs have no cookie fallback, so URL survival is everything. Click IDs are meant to be captured into a cookie almost immediately, so the cookie is everything. Running the UTM tool's logic against a click ID produces false alarms, which is why this is a separate check.

The click ID is the start of the chain. Clarvivo holds the rest of it.

Knowing your click ID persists tells you Google can attribute the conversion. Clarvivo connects that acquisition all the way to the payment, so you see which clicks became revenue rather than which clicks became conversions.

Connect paid acquisition to revenue

What this tool reads, and what it keeps