How transparent click tracking works with Google Ads

Google Ads treats click trackers differently from every other ad network. On Meta or TikTok you can put a tracking link straight into the ad and let it forward the visitor to your page. On Google you cannot. The ad's Final URL has to be your landing page, and a tracker is only allowed to sit in the tracking template, where it must show exactly where it sends the visitor next.

EventsIQ's click tracker is built around that rule. Here is what you paste into Google Ads, what happens on a click, and how the resulting lead is tied back to the ad that produced it.

The three values you paste into Google Ads

When a campaign in EventsIQ uses Redirect delivery and runs on Google, the campaign sheet shows three values under Google Ads URL options. Each one goes into the field of the same name in Google Ads, either on the campaign or on each ad.

Say your landing page is https://www.acme-solar.com/quote and your tracking domain is acme.eventsiq.io.

Final URL

https://www.acme-solar.com/quote

This is the page itself. Google sends the visitor here.

Tracking template

https://acme.eventsiq.io/spring-quote?eiq_source=SOURCE_ID&eiq_campaign=CAMPAIGN_ID&campaign_id={campaignid}&adgroup_id={adgroupid}&gclid={gclid}&eiq_url={lpurl}

This is your EventsIQ tracking link. It records the click. Google fills in {campaignid}, {adgroupid} and {gclid} at the moment of the click, and replaces {lpurl} with the Final URL.

Final URL suffix

eiq_source=SOURCE_ID&eiq_campaign=CAMPAIGN_ID&campaign_id={campaignid}&adgroup_id={adgroupid}&gclid={gclid}&eiq_tracked=1

These are the campaign's parameters. Google adds them to the landing page address, so the form on the page knows which campaign the visitor came from.

You do not build any of this by hand. The campaign sheet fills in your real ids, and each row has a Copy button.

The destination parameter: eiq_url

The important part of the tracking template is the last parameter, eiq_url={lpurl}. This is EventsIQ's transparency parameter. It names the next hop in plain sight, inside the link.

When a tracking link carries eiq_url, the tracker goes exactly there. It does not apply any of the things a normal EventsIQ campaign can do on the redirect:

• no routing rules (country, device, time of day),
• no traffic split between landing pages,
• no saved landing page in place of the one in the link.

The address in eiq_url is the address the visitor reaches, and the redirect is a plain HTTP 302. There is no meta refresh, no JavaScript redirect and no extra hop.

Why it is still not an open redirect

A tracker that follows any address it is handed could be abused to send people anywhere under your brand. So EventsIQ checks the value of eiq_url against the landing pages of the campaign the link belongs to. If the host is not one the campaign already sends people to, the tracker refuses the request with an HTTP 404.

The check is by host rather than by the full address, so a different path, a trailing slash or your own utm_source on the Final URL does not cause real clicks to be refused. www.acme-solar.com and acme-solar.com count as the same site.

Only two parameters are added

On a transparent redirect the tracker adds exactly two parameters of its own to the destination, and nothing else:

• eiq_click: the click id the tracker issued.
• eiq_campaign: the EventsIQ campaign the click belongs to.

It does not copy the tracking template's other parameters across, and never adds or changes anyone else's. Your UTM tags and Google's gclid reach the landing page because they are part of the Final URL or its suffix.

Parallel tracking: what actually happens on a click

Google runs clicks through parallel tracking. Instead of sending the visitor through the tracker, the browser opens the Final URL directly, and loads the tracking template in the background. In that background request Google replaces {lpurl} with an address of its own on google.com/asnc/, so the landing page is not loaded twice.

Here is the sequence for a visitor who clicks an Acme Solar ad:

1. The browser opens https://www.acme-solar.com/quote with the Final URL suffix and Google's gclid on it. The suffix includes eiq_tracked=1.
2. At the same time, the browser sends the tracking template to acme.eventsiq.io in the background, with the real gclid filled in and eiq_url set to Google's google.com/asnc/ address.
3. The tracker records the click, including the gclid, and answers by redirecting to Google's address exactly as given, unchanged. It only accepts that address when it is google.com or www.google.com, over HTTPS, under /asnc/.
4. The visitor fills in the EventsIQ form on the landing page. The lead carries the gclid it found on the page.
5. EventsIQ finds the recorded click with the same gclid and joins the lead to it.

From then on the lead knows its campaign, ad group and click id. If a lead is saved a moment before its click is recorded, EventsIQ fills it in when the click arrives.

When parallel tracking is off

If a click goes through the tracker in the foreground instead, the same tracking link records the click and redirects the visitor to the Final URL named in eiq_url, with eiq_click and eiq_campaign added. The form on the page reads eiq_click directly.

Why a click is counted once

The eiq_tracked=1 marker in the Final URL suffix exists to stop one ad click being counted twice.

EventsIQ also supports Direct delivery, where the ad points straight at the landing page and nothing of ours is in the path. In that mode the EventsIQ form script asks EventsIQ for a click id when the page loads, because no redirect recorded one.

Under parallel tracking, a Google visitor arrives with eiq_campaign from the suffix but without eiq_click, which on its own looks exactly like a direct visit. Without a marker, the page would ask for a second click id, and the lead would join that new click instead of the one the tracker recorded from Google's background request.

eiq_tracked=1 tells the page the click has already been recorded. The page collects nothing, and the lead finds its click by gclid. The marker lives only in the Final URL suffix, which Google adds itself, never in the tracking template. A plain direct link never carries it, so Direct campaigns keep collecting clicks as normal.

What the campaign sheet warns you about

Two checks run while you set the campaign up:

• A landing page that looks like another tracker's link, because it carries a web address in one of its parameters. Google only accepts a second click tracker in the chain when that tracker is itself certified by Google, so use the real page where you can.
• A landing page on a domain Google may refuse for your tracking domain. Our post on choosing a tracking domain explains this rule.

What you get in the end

Once the setup is live, open any lead in Activity → Lead Logs and look for The click this came from: the campaign, the link, when the visitor clicked and the click id. Every Google lead carries its click, every click is counted once, and anyone reading the tracking template can see exactly where it goes.