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October 2, 2025

iOS 26: How Apple’s Latest Update Impacts Google Ads Tracking — And What You Should Do Now

Apple has once again shaken up the digital marketing landscape. With the release of iOS 26, Safari introduces new protections that directly affect how marketers and advertisers track user behavior. One of the biggest changes? Safari is starting to remove some tracking parameters in Private Browsing mode. Some signs point to this behavior expanding to all users in the near future. Thus, if your business relies on Google Ads, now is the time to prepare. Here’s what’s changing, which parameters are at risk, and the steps you can take today to protect your conversion data.

Apple’s History of Privacy Pushes

Apple has a long track record of making it harder for advertisers to track users across sites and applications:

2017: Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) limited third-party cookies in Safari.
2021: App Tracking Transparency (ATT) forced apps to request explicit permission for tracking.
2022: Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) hid user IP addresses and blocked open-tracking pixels.
2023–2024: Link Tracking Protection stripped ad parameters in Mail, Messages, and Safari Private Browsing.

With iOS 26, Apple is doubling down by extending these protections deeper into Safari.

iOS 26: What’s Changing

The headline change in iOS 26 is Safari’s Advanced Tracking & Fingerprinting Protection. This update enables Safari to block a wider array of fingerprinting techniques and injects randomization into web APIs, making it much harder for advertisers to uniquely identify devices across sessions. The system also expands tracking parameter stripping (removing ad IDs and other tracking elements) from links in Safari’s Private Browsing mode, Mail, and Messages. As of iOS 26’s launch, parameter stripping applies specifically to Private Browsing, but marketers expect Apple could extend this protection to all browsing sessions in future updates, which would greatly impact digital advertising and attribution.

How Tracking Parameters Work

Tracking parameters are small snippets of information attached to a URL after the question mark. For example:

https://example.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=123abc

UTM parameters (like utm_source) tell analytics tools how a user arrived on your site.
Click IDs (like gclid for Google Ads or fbclid for Meta Ads) carry unique identifiers that let ad platforms connect a click with a conversion.

Without these parameters, your campaigns may still drive traffic, but you’ll lose the ability to attribute conversions accurately.

Which Parameters Are Affected

Here’s the current state:

At risk:

gclid (Google Ads)
fbclid (Meta Ads)
Other unique click IDs used by ad networks

Safe for now:

Standard UTMs (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, etc.)

The loss of gclid is particularly damaging for Google Ads advertisers. Without it, Google Ads cannot connect ad clicks with conversions. This will skew reporting, bidding algorithms, and ROI analysis.

The Solution for Google Ads

The good news, we have found a fix for Google Ads.

The solution we recommend does rely on server side tracking to properly set the requisite Google Ads cookies so if you have not done that already, let this be your push to future-proof your tracking setup ahead of time. This is something we help enable for our clients at Dataspace so please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like assistance with this.

You could accomplish this with a browser side (no server) configuration but that would require manually setting cookies which may get dropped anyway by Safari due to their strict cookie policy. These are also susceptible to breaking if Google decides to update their own cookie policy and which values are used for conversion tracking.

Step 1: Update your Google Ads Tracking Template

Under Admin -> Account Settings -> Tracking

Adjust your tracking template to add a custom parameter with the value {gclid}

You can give this whatever name you wish so long as the value is set to be {gclid}

Now when someone clicks over to your website, we will see the gclid value stored in multiple places for normal traffic with the backup parameter preserved in private browsing.

Example URL (normal browsing)

https://mrcatdad.com/?gclid=abc123&backup_parameter=abc123

Example URL (safari private)

Even if Safari removes the first gclid value, we will have our backup ready to pass this value.

https://mrcatdad.com/?backup_parameter=abc123

Step 2: Rename Backup Parameter in Server Container

First we need to build a new variable that will convert our incoming parameter into something Google will recognize. Thankfully, the good team over at Stape has created a variable to do just that.

Under Variables -> New -> Community Templates -> Query Replacer by Stape

Then enter the value of your custom parameter with gclid.

Next, we will need to leverage one of our server container transformations to manipulate our data into a format Google Ads can use. This is part of the reason why we need to this server side as this type of data transformation is native to server containers.

Step 3: Update Page URL for Conversion Linker

Under Transformations -> New select the Augment event option.

We are not going to enter any query parameter values here but rather the page_location parameter which will be adjusted by Stape’s Query Replacer variable.

Under affected tags, select some tags and choose the Conversion Linker tag to be adjusted. If you have not set that up yet, choose from the built-in tag for this under Tags -> New -> Conversion Linker

That is it! The hard part of this is getting your server container configured but for those who have made that effort, future proofing your setup ahead of Apple will pay off in reduced maintenance. So, that’s the whole process! While getting the server container configured can be a bit of a headache, anyone who tackles this now will find that future-proofing their setup for Apple’s upcoming changes will really cut down on maintenance later.

Step 4: Test Your Setup

After deploying your updates in Tag Manager, it is always important to thoroughly test your setup to ensure things are working as expected.

I made this URL for my website using sample UTMs and the regular and backup gclid parameter.

https://dataspacedigital.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid-search&utm_campaign=nonBrand-Search&gclid=CjwKCAjw_-3GBhAYEiwAjh9fUD63nISJ5SnjEQopg-wxkqWvNLmfrj-I2rc4YSIVSXz8fhXiEInKdBoCt80QAvD_BwE&custom_parameter=CjwKCAjw_-3GBhAYEiwAjh9fUD63nISJ5SnjEQopg-wxkqWvNLmfrj-I2rc4YSIVSXz8fhXiEInKdBoCt80QAvD_BwE

First we can test using a normal Safari browser. As of the last update on this article, the default behavior of a non-private browser is to not remove any of the gclid or other marketing parameters.

To evaluate whether our setup is working properly, we need to check whether the FPGCLAW cookie value has been set. For those unfamiliar with this, the FPGCLAW cookie, set by Google in server-side tagging, stores the Google Ads Click ID (GCLID) when the Google Ads conversion linker tag is active. This enhances the accuracy of ad click and conversion tracking, especially with server-side Google Tag Manager (GTM) or when the GCLID is removed from the URL, preserving campaign data.

Thus, we need to verify that this value is present as a litmus test for whether our setup is working properly.

Since Safari has not introduced any blockers in normal sessions yet, we can see the FPGCLAW value is set with no issue.

Now, onto private browsing. If our setup from steps 1-3 is not working, we will NOT see this cookie set. Using the same link as before, we can see that the FPGCLAW has been set as well.

Impact on Other Platforms

The solution we presented is just for Google Ads as the platform allows us to pass the gclid as a URL value. Currently, this is not supported by Meta, TikTok, or other platforms. Their click ids are currently generated dynamically at the time of the click on an advertisement and do not provide a way to dynamically add them to a URL template.

As a reminder, the sky is not falling yet as one estimate puts the percentage of Safari users who use Private Browsing at less than 10%. This was based on survey data as Apple does not publish statistics on this. Until Apple implements this in standard browsing, non-Google advertising platforms will be fine.

The best way to get ahead of this is to set up Conversions API connections with every advertising platform your company or client is using. This will future proof your setup as the click id is only one component used to match against customers.

If your company needs assistance with this, we are happy to help. Fill out the contact form to get started.

Conclusion

Apple’s iOS 26 update is another signal: the era of easy, parameter-based tracking is ending. Safari’s privacy features are only going to get stronger, and other browsers often follow Apple’s lead.

By proactively implementing server side tracking or tracking via a Conversions API, you’ll stay ahead of these updates and help make your setup independent of the decisions of Apple.

If you have any questions on the topics or solutions presented in this article, please feel free to leave a comment, contact us, or send Andrew a message on LinkedIn.