The challenge
The property's Google Ads conversions went up 173% in one month, but spend did not change. The monthly report showed this as a performance gain. The leasing system showed the opposite: completed applications went down from 56 to 41.
The spike also made the whole portfolio look better. Reported portfolio conversions were up 30%. Without this one property, growth was 2.7%.
What we did
- Compared daily GA4 events, Google Ads change history, and many versions of two Tag Manager containers, plus a network capture of a live click.
- Found the root cause. A regional tag container added a copy of an Apply Now tag that already ran in the main container. Each click was counted two times.
- Proved it with the data. Two events fire on the same triggers, but only one was copied. The copied event went from 96 to 603 in two weeks. The other event stayed flat (1,173 to 1,063).
The result
We corrected the monthly report. It now shows portfolio results with and without the affected account, and flags that the prior month's gain at this property was likely the same counting problem. We sent a fix request with five specific actions, and recommended conversion anomaly alerts at the account level, so a spike like this is found in days, not weeks.
Why this matters for multifamily
Many multifamily sites run more than one tag container, a chat tool, and a third-party application site. This is where double counting and lost attribution start. If you cannot trust the conversion data, smart bidding optimizes toward the wrong result.
Client name withheld. Figures come from client accounts.