Over the years, Google Ads has offered several conversion tracking options to complement the array of its advertisers’ business objectives. Some of the most common conversions to track include website purchases, newsletter signups, and button clicks. One conversion type, often overlooked, but imperative to incorporate into a Google Ads strategy is call tracking.

Call tracking is exactly what it sounds like – conversion tracking that records how many customers called a business after being served and clicking on their Google ad. If phone calls are essential to how your business and customers communicate, then call tracking can be beneficial for identifying which of your campaigns or products are contributing to more valuable phone calls. With Google’s call conversion settings, set a minimum call length to help weed out any irrelevant or accidental traffic. Every phone call that lasts that minimum call length is recorded as a conversion.

With call tracking, Google assigns Google forwarding phone numbers. These forwarding phone numbers record the details of calls and count them as conversions depending on their length. Google forwarding numbers are currently available in these countries.

There are multiple ways to track phone calls through Google Ads including call extensions, location extensions, or call-only ads. To track calls to a phone number made on a website or mobile site requires a person to click on an ad and click a call forwarding number displayed on the website. If this call meets the minimum time requirement, the call will be recorded as a conversion.

Google Ads can also import call conversion data tracked in another system, such as a CRM. This option grants more control over which calls are recorded as conversions. For example, you can choose to track calls as conversions only when they achieve sales and can include the dollar amount of the sales.

With call tracking, we can analyze data on a granular level and determine which keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns drove the most valuable phone calls. Additionally, adding call tracking to a campaign helps connect the dots to better understand a client’s ROAS (return on ad spend).

Although there are many benefits to including call tracking in your Google Ads strategy, it is important to keep in mind that any Google forwarding phone number is generated by Google, meaning the tracking number cannot be used on other platforms such as Microsoft Ads, Yahoo, or Facebook Ads.