To create a successful Google Ads campaign, you must have complete and proper conversion tracking. This is true for ecommerce activities like add-to-carts and purchases as well as for other conversion types like form submissions and calls. For many businesses, especially service businesses, incoming calls can make up a large part of their lead volume. Even many e-commerce shops often provide a phone number for prospective customers to call in to ask questions before purchasing or for current customers to get support for a product they already purchased. That’s why call tracking is essential for most businesses.
In fact, we’d argue that tracking call conversions is one of the most important types of conversions to track in Google Ads (along with form submissions and purchases). Unfortunately, call tracking in Google is often misunderstood and poorly set up so we wanted to help you ensure you don’t miss out on tracking this highly valuable conversion data.
In this guide, we’ll talk about how to set up Google Ads call tracking and discuss the best ways to track calls in Google Ads.
When Do You Need Call Tracking?
Nearly all businesses should set up call tracking, especially if you’re using Google Ads. To better understand when you need call tracking, let’s go over all the ways that someone can call your business’ phone number. This will help us understand what we need to set up to get the most robust and complete call tracking solution.
Here are the ways people can call you when using Google Ads.
- Clicks on Call Ads
- Clicks on phone numbers in Call assets or location assets (formerly call extensions and location extensions)
- Click-to-call links on the website after clicking on an ad
- Manually dialing (without clicking) a phone number on the website after clicking on an ad
- Manually dialing a phone number placed in ad copy
While we can track the first #1-4, unfortunately, Google Ads can’t track #5 so we don’t recommend placing phone numbers for your business directly in the ad copy of your ads (i.e. headlines or description lines).
It is also important to note that a click on a phone number, whether that’s in an ad (#1), a Google Ads extension (#2), or a clickable link on the website (#3), is just a click. It doesn’t necessarily mean a phone call was actually placed. After the click, the user has to open the dialer on their mobile device then click the green call button or open a calling app on their desktop.
Luckily, Google Ads call tracking goes beyond basic click tracking and lets you track the number of real phone calls made regardless of which of the first 4 above scenarios took place.
If you’re not tracking calls or you are only tracking phone number clicks, such as clicks on tel: links, then importing that data from Google Analytics into Google Ads, you’re missing out on much more valuable data.
Call Tracking Options in Google Ads
Without the use of additional paid software, there are essentially 3 ways to track phone calls in Google Ads for free. For the optimal free call tracking setup in Google Ads, we will need to use all three of these, but each tells you something different and has its own considerations.
- Call Conversions from ads: Real, connected calls made directly from ads created in Google Ads
- Count actual phone calls from clicks on Call Ads, call extensions, or numbers in location extensions
- “Calls from ads” conversion action is automatically created after creating a call extension and receiving your first call over 60 seconds – can also create it manually ahead of time
- Only tracks calls directly from ads (not from the website) – requires Calls from website
- Only tracks calls from Google Ads (not any other source)
- Call Conversions from website: Real, connected calls that happen once a user lands on your website after clicking one of your Google Ads
- Count actual phone calls to phone numbers on the website after someone clicks on your ad using a Google Ads call forwarding number
- Number formatting doesn’t matter so 555-555-5555 is the same as (555) 555-5555 is the same as 555.555.5555
- If there are any extra digits like country codes, then the number won’t work
- Only tracks calls made on the website, not directly from ads
- Requires additional tracking code on website (see below for setup)
- Only tracks calls from Google Ads, not any other source
- Contact clicks (optional): Clicks on tel: links on the website
- Doesn’t track actual calls – clicks don’t indicate that number of real calls made
- Only tracks clickable links. Some phone numbers may not be clickable
- Can’t count direct/manual dials
- Requires additional tracking code on website
- Can track clicks from all sources in Google Analytics an can be imported into Google Ads
Pro Tip: When it comes to call tracking, the best option with the fewest downsides is to use 3rd party call tracking software, such as CallRail, to track calls in Google Ads. While it isn’t free, it is relatively inexpensive (starts at ~$50/month) and gives you significantly more data because it allows you to track calls from all sources, not just Google Ads. You can also import that call data into Google Ads and other tracking tools such as Google Analytics and the Facebook Pixel. We highly recommend it!
By tracking these three actions, you’ll be able to measure:
- Total Phone Calls in Google Ads – this tracks calls made that didn’t meet your conversion settings
- Phone Call Conversions in Google Ads
- Phone number click events in Google Analytics (optional)
Track Calls As Conversions in Google Ads
Next, let’s walk through how to actually set up each of the call tracking options we discussed above. Having call data is one thing, but we also want to make sure that data is usable. In order to feed that call tracking data into Google Ads’ smart bidding and automated bid strategies, we need to create call conversion actions within Google Ads.
To set up call conversion actions, log into your Google Ads account, then:
- Click “Goals” (trophy icon on the left side)
- Click “Summary” under Conversions
- On the next screen, click the blue “+ New conversion action” button
- Choose “Phone calls”. Then, a new box will appear with 3 more options.
Phone Call Conversions
- Calls from ads using call extensions or call ads (a.k.a. Calls from ads)
- Calls to a phone number on your website (a.k.a. Calls from website)
- Clicks on your number on your mobile website (aka Phone Call Clicks – don’t need to use this one)
Here, we’ll set up conversion actions for the first two options. In the end, you’ll be able to track how many times your phone number was clicked on, how many times a real phone call was made, and how many times a phone call lasted over a specified threshold.
Calls from ads
The first option (“Calls from ads using call extensions or call ads”) will create a conversion action that tracks actual phone calls made from:
- Clicks on your call assets (formerly call extensions) phone numbers
- Clicks on your location assets (formerly location extensions) phone numbers
- Clicks on your call ads (formerly known as call-only ads)
Image Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6197455
Image source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2404182
Image Source: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6197455
Pro Tip: The “Calls from ads” conversion action will be automatically set up for you once you add a call extension, location extension, or call ad to your campaign AND you get a call from your Google Ads campaigns. You just need to make sure your “Call reporting” account setting is turned ON. Therefore, you most likely aren’t going to need to choose Option 1 and can move on to the next section.
While the “Calls from ads” conversion action will likely be automatically created for you, there are some instances when you may want to preemptively create one, such as when you’d like to change the default settings. For example, by default, the Calls from ads conversion action tracks calls over 60 seconds as a conversion. If you’d like to count only the first time a user calls or raise/lower the length before a call is counted as a conversion, then we’d recommend the following steps:
- From the New Conversion Action screen (see screenshot above), choose “Phone calls”
- Select the first option “Calls from ads using call extensions or call ads” then click Continue
- Enter a conversion name, we’d recommend “Calls from Ads” (capital “Ads” – this will help you differentiate between any automatically created conversion action which will have a lowercase “ads”).
- Choose the rest of your conversion settings if desired, then click the blue “Create and continue” button.
- After creating your “Calls from Ads” conversions action, navigate back to Goals > Conversions > Settings
- Expand the “Call conversion action” section, then select your newly created “Calls from Ads” (capital “Ads”). This will ensure that Google Ads uses the conversion action you created and doesn’t automatically create a new “Calls from ads” conversion action.
Calls from website
Next, the second phone call conversion option (“Calls to a phone number on your website”) lets you create a conversion action that tracks actual phone calls made to phone numbers on your website after a user clicks on one of your Google ads. (i.e. Google SERP → Click on ad → Visit your website → clicks or dials your phone number).
This is done by adding javascript to your website that dynamically replaces your actual phone number with a Google Forwarding Number so it can attributed back to a specific ad group. This is the same technique that more sophisticated 3rd party call tracking uses. While this is available for free to anyone using Google Ads, it has some drawbacks. Specifically, it can only flip one phone number per page (though you use a different phone number on a different page if your settings are correct) and it only tracks calls in Google Ads (not Google Analytics or any other tool).
Unlike “Calls from Ads,” this conversion action won’t be automatically set up for you so we need to manually create the “Calls from website” conversion action, then use Google Tag Manager to add the necessary tracking code to the website.
- From the New Conversion Action screen, select Phone Calls, then choose the second radio option,
- You’ll be taken to the conversion setup screen, like the one below, where you can adjust any conversion action settings. Make sure you enter the correct destination number (the number you’d like your calls to be forwarded to) and that the display number is EXACTLY as it appears on your webpage.
Pro Tip: This would be a good time to ensure your phone number appear exactly the same way throughout your website. For example, 555-555-5555 is not the same as (555) 555-5555 or +1-555-555-5555 or 555-CALL-NOW.
- Click the blue “Create and continue button”, then in the next section, choose the “Use Google Tag Manager” tab.
- From here, make not of your Conversion ID and Conversion label, then open Google Tag Manager in a new tab.
- In GTM, create a new tag and search for or select “Google Ads Calls from Website Conversion” as the tag type.
- On the next screen:
- Give your tag a name. We recommend “Google Ads – Calls from website”
- Enter the phone number you’d like to track (this is the one that will be replaced by a Google Forwarding Number. Remember what you enter here must be EXACTLY the same as what’s in the display number of your conversion settings and on your website.)
- Enter your Conversion ID from Google Ads – We recommend creating a Constant Variable to save your Google Ads conversion ID since it will be the same for every conversion action in the same account.
- Enter your Conversion Label from Google Ads conversion
- Choose All Pages as your trigger.
- Click the blue Save button. You should end up with a tag that looks like this.
After you’ve set up Calls from ads and Calls from website conversions, you’ll now have call tracking set up in Google Ads. You’ll be able to see the total calls connected as well as the number of calls that matched your call conversion settings.
Phone Call Clicks
When setting up Google Ads Phone Calls Conversions, the third radio button you’ll see after clicking New Conversion Action > Phone calls is “Clicks on your number on your mobile website.” We DO NOT recommend using this third option because it only lets you track clicks on phone number links, not actual calls and it’s only in Google Ads.
Pro Tip: Instead of using the “Clicks on your number on your mobile website” option, we recommend creating a click_contact event in Google Analytics 4. This will allow you to track the number of clicks on your clickable phone numbers from any source (not just Google Ads) and you’ll still be able to import it as a conversion into Google Ads if you desire. See the screenshot below for hits on how to do this using Google Tag Manager.
Evaluating Call Volume in Google Ads
Once you’ve set up your call tracking conversions in Google Ads, you’ll soon start seeing call data coming into to Google Ads. To evaluate how many calls were made and where they are coming from, you can add the “Phone calls” column to your campaign performance table in Google Ads.
A phone call counts how many times a call was connected to a Google Forwarding Number. It then has to meet your conversion settings (such as minimum call length) to count as a phone call conversion. Once a phone call meets all your conversion criteria, it will then show up in your Conversions column. If say, it’s not long enough, it’ll count in the phone call column, but not in the Conversions column of Google Ads.
Another handy place to evaluate your phone call data in Google Ads is the Call Details report which lets you see a call log of more detailed information about each call such as when it was placed, how long it lasted, and what number called your Google Forwarding Number.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is a lot that goes into tracking calls in Google Ads. Even though Google Ads call tracking isn’t perfect, it is still extremely helpful by allowing you to measure real phone calls made and it’s completely free. If you are looking for a more robust call tracking solution, we recommend using a 3rd party call tracking, such as CallRail, so that you can track calls from all sources (not just Google Ads), and see that data in Google Analytics.
If you need help setting up call conversions in Google Ads, don’t hesitate to reach out to the call tracking experts at Intigress.