Glossary
What is an offline conversion import in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas2 min readVerified 13 October 2026
Short answer
An offline conversion import records in Google Ads a sale that happened after the click, somewhere other than your website. Google describes the case: sometimes an ad doesn't lead directly to an online sale, but instead starts a customer down a path that ultimately leads to a sale in the offline world, such as at your office or over the phone. By importing offline conversions, it says, you can measure what happens in the offline world after your ad results in a click or call to your business.
The original method uses the click ID. Google says Google Ads provides a unique ID, called the Google click ID (GCLID), for every click that comes to your website from an ad, and that you save these IDs along with whatever lead information you collect from the person who clicked. Later, when that person converts in the offline world, by signing a contract, for example, you give that GCLID back to Google Ads along with a few details about the type of conversion that it was and when it happened.
Google now recommends the upgraded version. If you have not already adopted offline conversion import, it recommends starting with enhanced conversions for leads instead, which it describes as an upgraded version of offline conversion import that uses user-provided data, such as email addresses, to supplement imported offline conversion data. Google says advertisers who used first-party data alongside GCLIDs imported using offline import saw a median 10% increase in conversions compared to those using standard offline conversion imports. The upload route changes too: Google says that starting on 15 June 2026, offline conversion import and enhanced conversions for leads uploads will be migrated to the Data Manager API and blocked in the Google Ads API. And its modelled conversions page notes that offline conversion imports may not incorporate certain types of modelling.
Our reading, not Google's: an import is how your own record of a sale gets into Google Ads, rather than a better estimate of one. For a business whose sale happens on a call or at a signed contract, it is the piece of a data setup we would build first, because the outcome the bidder learns from is then the one the business is paid for.
We check this on every account we run
Riibon ties Meta and Google Ads back to outcomes measured outside the platforms, payments and bookings, so the number a decision rests on is one the business would recognise. When the platform and the business disagree, we show both and say which one we trusted.
Ask the Riibon app what your own account is counting as a conversion. Access starts with a short call: we look at your ads together, then run them for you or set the app up with you.