A small marker in an unsent message
Before trying Google ads, we added a source reference to the website’s request message and checked it without sending anything.
On 21 October, I sent the agent a screenshot of a Google advertising-credit offer and asked whether we should test the return from ads. Before any launch, I wanted it to check the offer’s terms, repair the website tracking and prepare a small pilot for me to review. Later, I made the spending limit explicit: we had no budget to pay, and the ads had to stay off.
One piece we could finish was on our own website. Visitors already had a way to choose food and review a text request before opening their messaging app. To help identify requests from the proposed Google pilot, the agent added a fixed reference to that message. A visit through the prepared campaign link would carry the reference into the request the visitor could read.
The marker was a short line: Google ad reference: CGMK-G150. It could travel with the dish choices and pickup question instead of being left behind in a website-visit report. If a request later arrived with that reference, we would have something to match against the campaign. That still left the actual order, payment and any refund to be checked separately.
I approved the website change while keeping the advertising launch separate. After the update went live, the agent opened the official website through the prepared campaign link and made a clearly labelled test draft. It checked that the reference appeared in the message shown on the page and in the message text encoded in the link to the messaging app.
The check stopped at that draft. No message was sent and no real order was created. Opening a messaging app would not have proved that a message had been sent either. The website’s existing reminder still applied: the kitchen had to confirm a request before it became a confirmed order. The browser check established that the reference reached the prepared message; it did not test delivery from a physical phone.
By the end of that work, the website change was live and the test draft contained the reference. The advertising offer still needed qualifying spend before its credit could be earned, so it did not fit my zero-payment limit. The ads remained off. We had completed one practical piece of preparation for tracing a future request, with no advertising return to report yet.
