Call tracking
What is call tracking?
Call tracking shows which phone calls came from an ad, from search, or from one particular campaign. It works with a substituted number: the visitor sees a forwarding number that rings your own line, while the system records the source, the time and the length of the call. In Google Ads a call longer than a length you choose can count as a conversion.
Example
An appliance repair service takes 120 calls a month and cannot say where they come from. With tracking in place the picture is: 46 from Google Ads, 38 from organic search and the business profile, 20 from Facebook, 16 direct. Advertising spend is €480, so a call from advertising costs €10.43. If three in ten calls turn into a job, winning a job costs about €34.80.
The same report shows something else: 22 calls came in on a Saturday, when nobody answers. That loss appears in no advertising metric at all.
Why it matters for a business
For trades where people phone instead of typing — repairs, transport, health, construction — the call is the lead. Without tracking, half the result is missing from the calculation and advertising looks dearer than it is.
There are two technical routes. Google Ads counts calls made from the ad itself through a forwarding number, which is available in some countries only, and counts calls from the website through a snippet that swaps the displayed number for visitors who arrived from an ad. Independent call tracking services use a pool of numbers and cover every source, organic included.
Two things need care. Call data is personal data: the number, the duration and any recording fall under GDPR, and a call is recorded only with a clear notice and a lawful basis. And the main number stays in the business profile and in the page markup — only the number shown to advertising visitors is swapped, so contact details stay consistent.
What to ask
- How long does a call have to last before it counts as a result?
- Can we see missed calls, and at what hours they happen?
- How do calls and form submissions come together in one report?
- What happens to the numbers if we stop the service?
We set call tracking up together with conversion tracking for Google Ads, so calls and forms can be read in the same table.