Solved: Google Ads Tracking Only for Business Email Addresses?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your situation with Google Ads. It’s a common problem to be fair, getting a load of leads that dont go anywhere, so let's unpack it a bit.

We'll need to look at your core problem, not just the symptom...

First off, to answer your direct question: can you make Google Ads only fire a conversion for a business email? The short answer is no, not directly inside the Google Ads platform itself. There's no setting or tickbox that says "only count conversions from @companyname.com". The platform just isn't built to differentiate email domains like that for its standard tracking.

However, there is a technical workaround. You could get a bit clever with Google Tag Manager (GTM). The basic idea would be to set up a rule on your website that checks the email address someone enters into your form. You could create a list of common free email providers (gmail.com, hotmail.co.uk, yahoo.com, outlook.com, etc.). Then, you'd configure a custom trigger in GTM to *only* fire your Google Ads conversion tag if the submitted email domain is *not* on that blocklist. It's a bit of a faff to set up, but it's doable if you know your way around GTM. This would, as you hoped, start feeding the machine learning algorithm with data only from the 'business' leads, which should in theory teach it to find more people like them.

But, and this is a big but, I'd be brutally honest and say this is probably not the best solution. It’s a bit like putting a plaster on a broken leg. You're treating a symptom – the gmail.com address – rather than the root cause, which is that your campaign is attracting the wrong type of person in the first place. You might be throwing away perfectly good leads. What about the one-man-band consultant, the freelancer, or the small business owner who started their company using their trusted Gmail account? They could be your ideal customer, but your system would just ignore them. The email domain is a clue, but it’s not the whole story. The real problem is lead qualification, and we need to fix that at the source: your targeting and your offer.

I'd say you need to redefine your ideal customer...

Before we even touch the ads account again, the first thing I'd do is get really, really specific about who you're actually trying to sell to. It sounds like you're a B2B company. So who are the businesses that need you? And more importantly, who are the *people* inside those businesses that make the decision to buy?

This is what we call an Ideal Customer Profile, or ICP. It’s more than just a vague idea; it's a concrete description. You need to think about:

Company Characteristics:
-> What industry are they in? (e.g., Software, Manufacturing, Business Services, Financial Services)
-> What's the company size? (e.g., SMEs with 50-200 employees, or larger enterprises?)
-> Where are they located geographically?

Decision-Maker Characteristics:
-> What is their job title? (e.g., CMO, Head of Sales, IT Manager, CEO)
-> What is their seniority level?
-> What are their daily frustrations? What problems are they trying to solve that your service fixes?

Most business services are pretty difficult to sell unless the company already has an urgent need they are looking to solve. People rarely browse for B2B solutions for fun. This means they are almost certainly 'problem aware'. Your entire advertising strategy has to be built around this fact. Once you have a crystal-clear picture of this person and their company, every other decision – from the keywords you bid on to the copy you write on your ads – becomes a thousand times easier and more effective. Without this foundation, you're just throwing money at Google and hoping for the best, which seems to be what's happening now with the poor quality leads your getting.

You probably should rethink your Google Ads targeting...

Once you know exactly who you're after, we can go back into Google Ads and make it work much harder for you. The goal is to get your ads in front of people who are actively searching for a solution to a business problem, not just casual browsers. This is all about intent.

Keyword Strategy Overhaul
Your keyword choice is everything in Google Search ads. You need to target keywords that signal commercial, B2B intent. Let's imagine you sell AI implementation services. A poor keyword strategy would be to target broad terms like:

-> "what is ai"
-> "ai tools"
-> "learn artificial intelligence"

These will get you lots of clicks from students, researchers, and curious people using their Gmail accounts, but very few actual business leads. It's a classic mistake and probably a big reason for your issue. A much better, more targeted strategy would focus on keywords that people with a real business need and a budget would type in:

-> "ai implementation service for small business"
-> "hire ai developers"
-> "ai consulting agency near me"
-> "best crm with ai integration"

See the difference? These searchers are looking to *buy* or *hire*. They have a specific problem. By focusing your budget here, you automatically filter out a huge chunk of the low-quality traffic. You'll get fewer clicks, and your cost per click (CPC) will likely be higher, but the quality of the lead on the other end will be far superior, making your cost per *qualified* lead much, much lower.

Audience Layering
Don't just rely on keywords alone. Google Ads lets you layer audiences on top of your search campaigns. This can be really powerful. You can tell Google to prioritise showing your ads to people who are searching for your keywords *and* also fit into certain audience profiles. For B2B, you should be testing audiences like:

-> In-Market Audiences: "Business Services", "Business Financial Services", "Advertising & Marketing Services".
-> Detailed Demographics: People who work in certain company sizes or industries (where available).
-> Retargeting: This is a must. You need to be running a retargeting campaign to show ads to everyone who has visited your website but hasn't converted yet. These are warm leads; they already know who you are. Don't let them forget you.

By combining sharp keyword targeting with relevant audience layering, you tell the Google algorithm in much clearer terms who your ideal customer is. It'll have a much better starting point than just trying to figure it out based on who fills in a form.

You'll need a stronger qualification process on your site...

Getting the right people to your website is only half the battle. Your website itself has to do the hard work of converting them and, crucially, qualifying them. Right now, it sounds like your form is too simple, making it easy for anyone to fill it in. Instead of just blocking Gmail accounts, you should be actively filtering leads with your form itself.

Revamp Your Lead Form
A simple 'Name, Email, Message' form is an invitation for low-quality leads. You need to ask for more information that a serious business prospect would have no problem providing, but a casual browser would be too lazy to complete. Add fields like:

-> Company Name (make this compulsory)
-> Job Title
-> Company Size (as a dropdown)
-> Phone Number (optional, but good to have)

Just by adding these fields, you'll see a drop in total conversions, but a huge spike in lead quality. Someone who isn't serious won't bother filling it all out. A genuine prospect will see it as a standard part of doing business. This is a far more effective filter than an email domain check.

Improve Your Offer (The Call to Action)
What are you actually asking people to do on your site? Is it a generic "Contact Us"? That's not very compelling. For B2B, you need to offer something of value in exchange for their details. Think about what a potential customer would genuinely want. Your offer, or Call to Action (CTA), should be the centrepiece of your landing page. Consider changing your offer to something like:

-> "Schedule a Free 15-Min Strategy Call"
-> "Get a Free, No-Obligation Quote"
-> "Request a Live Demo"
-> "Download Our [Industry] Case Study"

These offers are more specific and professional. They imply a clear next step and manage expectations. A strong offer attracts strong leads. I've seen B2B SaaS clients go from zero to hero just by changing their offer from a vague contact form to a "free trial" or a "demo". It works because it reduces the risk for the prospect and gives them something tangible.

We should look at other platforms built for B2B...

While we can definately make Google Ads work better, you're fishing for B2B clients, so you need to be fishing in the right pond. For B2B lead generation, no platform comes close to LinkedIn Ads for precision targeting.

The Power of LinkedIn Ads
On Google, you're targeting what people are searching for. On LinkedIn, you're targeting *who people are*. You can build an audience based on the exact ICP we talked about earlier. Think about it, you can target:

-> Job Title: e.g., "Chief Technology Officer", "Head of Marketing", "VP of Sales"
-> Industry: e.g., "Computer Software", "Financial Services", "Marketing and Advertising"
-> Company Size: e.g., "51-200 employees", "201-500 employees"
-> Specific Companies: You can literally upload a list of dream client companies and target the decision-makers within them.

This is a level of B2B targeting you just can't get on Google. For one of our B2B software clients, we ran a campaign on LinkedIn and were able to get leads from key decision-makers at a cost of just $22 per lead.

LinkedIn Ad Formats & Strategy
You'd want to test a couple of approaches.
-> Sponsored Content with a Lead Gen Form: This is probably the best place to start. You run an ad (image or video) in the main news feed. When someone clicks your CTA, a form pops up right there within LinkedIn, pre-filled with their profile information (name, email, job title, company). It's incredibly low-friction for the user and gives you fantastically clean, accurate data.
-> Sponsored Content to a Landing Page: This is similar, but you send the traffic to your own website. The cost per lead is usually higher, but the leads are often more qualified because they've had to make the extra effort to visit your site and learn more before converting.
-> Conversation Ads: This is a more direct approach, like a paid InMail message. It can work well to start conversations if your offer is really compelling, but it can also be seen as a bit spammy if not done right.

The point is, if your number one problem is getting leads from actual businesses, you should be dedicating a portion of your budget to the one platform that is built exclusively for businesses. It's often more expensive per click than Google, but the lead quality can be so much higher that the return on investment is far better.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To pull all this together, here’s a table summarising the actionable steps I'd recommend you take. This is a structured approach that moves from fixing the immediate technical issue to building a proper, sustainable lead generation engine.

As you can probably tell, getting this right is more involved than just flicking a switch in your Google Ads account. It's about building a coherent strategy where your targeting, your messaging, and your on-site experience all work together to attract and convert the *right* kind of customer. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about understanding your audience, optimising your targeting, creating compelling ads, and fine-tuning your landing page.

This is where professional help can make a huge difference. I remember one client, a medical job matching SaaS company, where we reduced their Cost Per User Acquisition from £100 down to £7 by optimising their Meta and Google Ads campaigns. We've also generated over 1,500 trials for another B2B SaaS client using Meta Ads. An expert can audit your entire funnel, identify the biggest opportunities for improvement, and implement these complex strategies for you, ensuring every pound you spend is working as hard as it possibly can to grow your business.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a much clearer path forward. If you'd like to have a more in-depth chat, we offer a free initial consultation where we can review your account and strategy together and provide some more specific advice. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds useful.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh