How-to · Updated October 11, 2026
Keep iPhone ad clicks trackable with gbraid and wbraid
Updated October 11, 2026
45 minutes
Some iPhone ad clicks arrive with gbraid or wbraid in the address instead of gclid. Check every place that looks for a click ID: form fields, call tracking source rules, lead filters and reports, and the upload. Each must accept all three, keep them in separate fields, and never read a missing gclid as no ad click.
Before you start
- Auto-tagging on in Google Ads. Without it no click ID of any kind is added to the address.
- Access to your forms, your call tracking account and your lead list or CRM, or someone who can change them.
- An iPhone with a Google app on it, to see what a real click from one of your ads looks like.
See which IDs reach your site
Confirm the iPhone IDs survive the trip to your landing page before changing anything downstream.
- On an iPhone, open one of your ads from inside a Google app and read the landing page address. Google's own test is to look for wbraid= in it. Google says it stopped sending the GCLID on iOS traffic from a handful of Google apps when Apple's App Tracking Transparency rules took effect in April 2021.
- If the site redirects, the address you end on must still carry the wbraid or gbraid, as Google says it must for the GCLID. If the page shows an error, the site rejects unknown parameters. Google says a small percentage of sites may need to allow arbitrary URL parameters.
- Keep the Google tag or Tag Manager with a Conversion Linker on every page. Google says these set a first-party cookie that attributes conversions from those iOS clicks, and turning off conversion linking opts out of it.
Make every capture point read all three IDs
Anything that looks for gclid alone treats an iPhone ad lead as if it came from somewhere else.
- Forms: give every form hidden fields for gclid, gbraid and wbraid, each filled from the address by its own name. The full method is in the page on saving the click ID with form leads.
- Call tracking: in CallTrackingMetrics, open Numbers, then Tracking Sources, click Edit on each Google Ads source and read its Landing URL condition. CallTrackingMetrics' Google Ads preset already includes wbraid=.+ and gbraid=.+. It says a custom source you built yourself should have them added.
- Lead lists and reports: find any filter, column or rule that decides a lead came from an ad by checking for a gclid, and make it check for any of the three. A lead with only a wbraid is still a lead from an ad click.
- Storage: keep each ID in its own field, exactly as it arrived. Google says a GBRAID is case sensitive and should not be converted to upper or lower case. Never copy a gbraid or wbraid into the gclid field.
Send iPhone-keyed conversions back the right way
An upload has a separate place for each ID, and Google refuses some combinations.
- Put a gbraid in the upload's GBRAID field and a wbraid in WBRAID. Google's upload guides list each as its own optional column.
- Send a gbraid or a wbraid on one conversion, never both. Google refuses a conversion with both set. A gclid and a gbraid together are allowed, and Google recommends sending both when you have them.
- Send them to a conversion action whose count is Every. Google refuses gbraid and wbraid conversions on an action that counts one conversion per click.
- If your call tracker sends calls to Google Ads for you, confirm it supports the iOS IDs. CallTrackingMetrics' Direct Connect integration lists GBRAID and WBRAID among the click IDs it sends.
Check it worked
Open a landing page with ?wbraid=test-456 at the end of the address (use & instead of ? if the address already has a ?), send a form and make a test call from the number shown. The form lead should hold test-456 in its wbraid field, and the call should be assigned to your Google Ads source. Repeat with ?gbraid=test-789. The made-up ID is not a real click, so make sure no upload or call-conversion trigger sends these test leads to Google Ads; if one does, Google may refuse it as unparseable. Delete the test leads afterwards.
After a week of ads, count the leads with any of the three IDs, not only gclid. Allow time for uploaded conversions to appear in Google Ads: Google says processing typically takes less than 12 hours, but can take up to 72 hours for conversions keyed by GBRAID or WBRAID.
What gbraid and wbraid mean
Google describes a wbraid as present when someone clicks an ad in an iOS app and lands on your webpage, and a gbraid as present when someone clicks an ad on the web and is sent to your iOS app. Either can appear on a website: Google's iOS page says gbraid is added to landing page URLs for iOS 14.5 and later clicks, so capture both. Google's file import guide describes GBRAIDs as used for aggregate measurement on iOS and Safari, and Google reports conversions measured with the new iOS parameters using conversion modeling.
Why the share of leads with a gclid can drop without anything breaking
Google says you may see fewer GCLIDs in landing page addresses, and fewer reported website and offline conversions, for traffic from the affected iOS apps. If iPhone traffic grows, the share of leads with a gclid falls even when capture works perfectly. Count all three IDs before concluding that tracking broke.