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Tracking and reporting

Phone call conversion

call conversion Google Ads / calls from ads conversion / minimum call length

In short

A phone call conversion is a call that Google Ads counts as a conversion, usually one that lasts at least a minimum length the advertiser sets. Two of Google's five tracking methods count taps or estimates instead of calls, so a report can show call conversions for calls that never happened.

Google lists five ways to track them. Calls from ads, and calls to a Google forwarding number shown on your website, both count a call once it lasts at least the minimum call length you set. Imported call conversions come from another system, such as a CRM, and let you count only the calls that turned into sales.

The other two count something short of a call. Clicks on a number on your mobile website are tracked as clicks, and Google says it cannot track the phone calls themselves. Clicks on call ads and assets without a forwarding number count based on Google's estimation of whether a meaningful phone call occurred.

The minimum call length decides what counts. Calls shorter than it are left out, and Google points to the Call details report for the actual durations. Google Ads also attributes these conversions to the date of the ad click, so a call can land in a different week from the click that produced it.

In practice

A plumbing company's account shows 42 phone call conversions last month. Thirty are calls from ads that lasted at least the 60 seconds it chose as a minimum. Twelve are taps on the phone number on its mobile site, which Google can only track as clicks. The company can confirm 30 calls, and the other 12 may never have rung. The figures are a worked example.

Not the same as

Call tracking
Call tracking records calls and their details. A phone call conversion is the subset of those calls, or taps, that a conversion action is set up to count.

Why it matters to you

Automated bidding learns from whatever is counted as a conversion. If taps and short calls count, the account is steered toward more of them. A sensible minimum length, or importing only the calls that became jobs, points spend at calls that matter.

What to ask or check

  1. 01Which of the five call conversion methods does the account use, and which are set as primary?
  2. 02What minimum call length is set, and why that length?
  3. 03Are any call conversions counted from taps on a phone number instead of from calls?
  4. 04Could calls that became jobs be imported from the CRM?

What people get wrong

That every phone call conversion is a phone call. For clicks on a number on a mobile website, Google says it can only track the clicks, and for call ads without a forwarding number it counts an estimate.

Keep reading

Call tracking

Call tracking replaces the phone number shown to a visitor with a substitute number that routes to your real one. Only calls dialed through that substitute are measured. Google assigns a forwarding number when call reporting is on, and Microsoft requires an ad group to have reached 10 clicks and 10 dollars of spend in 30 days.

Conversion

A conversion is an action you told the ad platform to count as a result, like a form or a call. The number is not a headcount. Google's One conversion setting counts one per ad click, not per person, and Microsoft calls the same two settings All and Unique.

Primary and secondary conversion actions

Primary and secondary conversion actions decide which conversions count where. Google reports primary actions in the Conversions column and uses them for bidding, while secondary actions are observation only and appear in All conversions. Microsoft draws the same line with a property called ExcludeFromBidding.

Offline conversion import

An offline conversion import tells the ad platform that a click became a sale somewhere it could not see. You store the click ID with the lead and hand it back when the deal closes. Microsoft states that anything uploaded more than 90 days after the click is not imported.

Smart Bidding

Smart Bidding sets a bid for every individual auction rather than per keyword. Google calls this auction-time bidding and says some of its signals are exclusive to it. Microsoft is blunt about the trade: with auto-bidding you can only set a bid at campaign level, and the model computes the rest.

Enhanced conversions

Enhanced conversions send a hashed version of your customer's email address or phone number to the ad platform, which matches it against its own signed-in account holders. Both platforms describe it as a replacement for third-party cookies, and both match against their own user base.

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