What is Google Ads call tracking?
Google Ads call tracking is a type of conversion tracking that shows you how many prospective customers called your business after seeing or clicking one of your PPC placements.
How does Google Ads call tracking work?
Google Ads call tracking has two main functions:
- Tracking calls that are made to a Google forwarding number, which is displayed in a call extension ad
- Tracking calls through dynamic number insertion on your website, where a unique tracking number is swapped in for each site visitor
CallRail has a seamless integration with Google Ads designed to help marketers optimize attribution and conversion tracking.
How can I track someone who is calling?
Google’s call reporting capabilities allow you to track each caller, as well as showing key details like start and end time, whether the call was received or missed, and the area code of the caller.
To see call details, head to the Campaign, Ads, Ad groups, or Keyword tab and click the Columns icon above the statistics table. Select Call Details, pick the checkbox next to the data you’re interested in, hit Apply, and from then on, you’ll see these call detail columns with your new statistics.
How to set up Google Ads call tracking
Setting up Google Ads call tracking for forwarding numbers is simple: You only need to add call extensions to your ad(s), and then enable call reporting in Google Ads and Analytics. (We review this process in step-by-step detail in this call extension blog post.) During the setup, you’ll have to create a conversion action for a phone call under the ‘Tools > Conversions‘ menu in Ads, which you’ll then select when creating your call extension.
Setting up Google’s dynamic number insertion feature is a little more complicated, and requires a working knowledge of how to change the source code on your website. (Google has a step-by-step implementation guide.) As part of this process, you’ll have to add a snippet of code to all of your website’s pages, and then edit the code snippet according to the tracking numbers you want to swap in and out.
This can be a complicated task, even for those experienced in JavaScript and coding, so it’s best to be proactive about getting someone on your team with dev experience to assist you.
Is it possible to track the conversation in Google Adwords?
Unfortunately, while Google Adwords provides you with a range of call-specific data, you can’t use it to review what was said on a call. It merely tells you who called, when, and for how long — not what they spoke about.
If you want to track each customer conversation, you would leverage a tool like Conversation Intelligence by CallRail. Conversation Intelligence automatically transcribes and analyzes all your calls. It leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to surface key insights and provide at-a-glance summaries of each call via a Call Highlights reports, as well as providing complete transcriptions if you want to go into even greater detail.
How performance insights are enhanced with CallRail's Call Tracking integration
By integrating Google Ads with Call Tracking by CallRail, your business can dive beneath the ‘what’ and delve into the ‘why’. Understand why customers decided to take action by tracing each phone call back to the marketing that drove it. Use these key metrics to improve your marketing performance over time, doubling down on strategies that have been proven to drive calls.
Below, we delve into what visitor-level tracking is before outlining how it helps businesses improve their marketing performance.
Visitor Level Tracking for your campaign
Visitor tracking is dynamic — tracking the full visitor journey as users navigate to, from, and around your website. Visitor tracking is also the only way you can see conversions in Ads, matching call conversions to your keyword bids.
Visitor tracking uses the DNI integration with a group of tracking numbers (called website pools) to assign unique tracking numbers to individual customers. Once DNI is integrated, create a website pool to create a group of tracking numbers that will accommodate peak traffic times on your website.
Instead of a single tracking number determined by its source, you’ll have a pool of tracking numbers that will automatically rotate for each new visitor on your website. Once a customer calls a tracking number in your pool, the cookies collected from their visitor path will show you which keywords they used to click on a paid search ad to find you, which pages of your website they visited, and which page they were on when they made their phone call.
Know which keywords, campaigns, and landing pages drive phone calls
There are several advantages to having visitor tracking data in your CallRail reporting. First, you can refine your web design based on how new customers navigate your site and the pages that are driving the most call conversions.
Secondly, keyword data helps you improve your search engine bidding strategies because you can see which search terms your customers use. Visitor tracking also stores the full visitor path in a caller timeline that you can view before, during, or after a call. Caller timelines include UTM parameters, device type, keywords, website activity, etc. Each time that customer calls or interacts with your website, their caller timeline will be updated:
Pro Tip: In Google Ads, you can customize the Destination URL for each keyword you are bidding on. Over time, having visitor-level data will help you match the right keywords with relevant, high performing pages of your website for a more sophisticated Ads bidding strategy.
For reporting, you’ll be able to view Call Attribution reports by Keyword, Referring Page, and Landing Page. You’ll also have access to Calls by Landing Page and Calls by Active Page reports:
In these examples, “puppy training” was the most successful keyword, Google was the highest performing referring page, and the homepage puppytraining.com was the highest trafficked landing page that created calls.
What else can I do with Google Ads call tracking?
Google Ads also offers a slew of additional features that work in conjunction with your call analytics, including:
Google forwarding numbers & Click to Call (CTC)
While many paid ads direct traffic to websites, Google Ads also offers a mobile-friendly feature called Click to Call (CTC) that dials a business’s phone number once the ad is clicked.
You can use call extensions to trigger CTC either through standard search ads, or through call-only ads (which are also a great way to boost call volume to your business). The Google Ads and Analytics interface tracks CTC just like standard PPC campaigns, so you can observe in real time which of your placements are driving the most phone calls.
This feature also lets you measure a conversion according to the length of the phone call that drove it, which adds a great deal of flexibility and granular control to your reporting.
Mobile and desktop insights
Google Ads can break down your ad analytics according to whether the placement was viewed on a mobile device or on desktop, allowing you to better optimize your PPC campaigns for specific platforms and audiences.
When viewing your call campaign data in Google Ads, just click on the ‘Segment‘ button to display important data like click through rates, conversion rates, and impressions broken down by device.
Are there restrictions on using Google Ads call tracking for PPC?
While Google Ads offers a robust feature set within Google’s marketing ecosystem, there are still some minor limitations to its call tracking features.
The primary sticking point for most marketers is the fact that each Google-generated phone number is the property of Google, and cannot be used anywhere except on Google ads. That means these tracking numbers are off-limits for other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, or for social media platforms like Facebook.
Google currently doesn’t offer its CTC feature for Display Network ads either, meaning you can’t drive calls directly from image-based ads. These limitations can create attribution blind spots that make it more difficult to determine the success of your campaign or PPC strategy, and therefore more difficult to measure the overall quality of your prospects and leads.
If you’re looking to achieve a more complete picture of which PPC ads are getting customers to pick up the phone and which ads are driving ROI, then call tracking software is a great solution. By pairing call tracking software with Google Ads, you’ll be armed with robust data and analytics to support your decision-making the next time you optimize a campaign.
How to optimize your campaigns with Call Tracking insights
CallRail’s Google Ads integration adds more power to your campaigns by revealing detailed metrics about the ad clicks that lead a prospect to find your website and call your business. If you’re using visitor-level tracking, we’ll push call data to Google Ads so you can see exactly which campaigns convert the most customers.
Optimizing Google Ads for call tracking takes only a few steps. (This guide is most helpful if you’re using visitor-level tracking in your CallRail account.)
Turn on auto-tagging in Google Ads
Auto-tagging is a Google Ads setting that allows for detailed tracking of your ad campaigns. When you turn on auto-tagging in Google Ads, Google records a unique ID for each web visitor’s ad click so you can track your conversions. This unique ID is called a Google Click ID or Gclid.
Learn how to turn on auto-tagging with Google’s instructions.
To view your calls as conversions, activate this feature in your Google Ads account settings. When a caller dials one of your website pool numbers, CallRail will record the Google Click ID and tie it to the caller’s web session and visitor timeline. This allows us to associate a phone call with the campaign that converted the customer so you can see your conversions in Google Ads.
Use tracking templates for caller insights
Adding ValueTrack parameters to your tracking templates in Google Ads allows specific information about your ad clicks to show in Google Ads and third-party reporting tools like CallRail. Depending upon the parameters you use, you’ll see details about your website and ad visitors, including the keywords they used to find you, and even the device they used when they clicked on your ad.
To better help you optimize Google Ads for call tracking, here is the essential call tracking URL formula:
campaignid={campaignid}&adgroupid={adgroupid}&creative={creative}&matchtype={matchtype}&network={network}&device={device}&keyword={keyword}
Copy and paste this formula right to your tracking templates in Google Ads. Once these parameters have been added, you’ll start seeing the following information in CallRail:
- The keywords the caller used to find your ad and how closely they aligned with the keywords you’re bidding on
- The Google network that served the ad
- The ad’s position on the page when the caller clicked on it
- The device the caller used when they clicked on your ad
Here are our step-by-step instructions for adding parameters to your tracking templates.
When a visitor calls your business following an online search, we’ll automatically parse this information and present it to you in an easy-to-read format on your caller’s timelines. You can include any tracking parameter that’s best for your campaign – we’ll include those in your caller’s timelines as well:
Take your data one step further with CallRail’s Multi-Touch CPL report
If you’re using the methods outlined above to track keywords and conversions, then we’ve got just the reporting tool for you. CallRail’s Multi-Touch CPL report allows you to calculate the cost per lead for your Google Ads campaigns:
This powerful and versatile reporting tool gives you five different attribution models to pick from, so you can attribute lead credit to different milestones in your sales funnel. The cost to run your campaigns and the cost per lead display alongside each of your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, so you don’t have to switch between CallRail and Google Ads to see how your campaigns are performing.
Find out how CallRail’s Multi-Touch CPL report can help you spend your marketing dollars wisely.
With CallRail’s powerful call tracking features, you can measure your marketing ROI with pinpoint accuracy. When you use call analytics to better understand your ad campaigns, you’ll never second-guess your next marketing move.
Listen to your customers' needs at scale with Conversation Intelligence
Small businesses across every industry can utilize Conversation Intelligence to drive actionable insights from call transcriptions, qualify and score incoming leads, identify keywords for marketing purposes, and more. The more your business grows, the more information you gather — and the more you understand your customers.
Conversation Intelligence uses AI to look out for common words and phrases mentioned by your customers. It can then perform a number of time-saving actions on your behalf, including tagging inbound or outbound calls and sorting them into useful buckets.
Automation rules can be used to apply a lead score, add tags, and more based on keywords spoken in a conversation.
For example, when a law firm in Austin received multiple calls about “scooter accidents,” the practice saw an opportunity to support these clients. Based on the strong upward trend in this CI-spotted keyword, the firm opened an entirely new line of business for scooter accidents.
The “Key Terms Spotted” report shows the most commonly-spoken words and phrases at a glance.
If you’ve found a new line of business successful, like this law firm did, you may be interested in running marketing campaigns based on these top keywords. You can utilize Conversation Intelligence’s keyword spotting to inform your website’s SEO strategy, digital ads, direct mail campaigns and more. When you find something that sticks, start putting some real muscle and budget behind it.
Your existing or prospective customers are the best resource to tell you what they want — and the more you listen to them and pick out key trends, the more you can find new customers with the same needs.
Use Visitor-Level Tracking to understand every customer's journey
As mentioned above, the foundation of visitor-level call tracking is a pool of telephone numbers that belongs exclusively to your business. Every time a visitor arrives on your website, we assign them a phone number from your pool. The visitor sees this phone number the entire time they’re on your website. Each phone number is assigned to one visitor at a time, so you can link calls directly to individual visitors.
When your business receives a call via a number in your pool, CallRail knows which visitor it was assigned to, and we associate that call to the source and keyword the caller used to find your business. When the visitor is finished browsing your website, we free up that phone number so it can be assigned to another visitor. You'll know which marketing sources are driving calls, and you'll be able to drill down to the individual search visitor level and link calls to specific web visitors and their actions on your site.
Correlate calls to individual website visitors to track PPC keywords driving calls and see the full visitor path, before and after the call.
