How-to · Updated October 11, 2026
Decide whether your call tracking must announce call recording
Updated October 11, 2026
20 minutes, plus time to read your state's law
List every system that records your calls: the call tracking tool and Google Ads' own forwarding numbers. Read your state's recording statute yourself, since some states require every party's consent. Then set the tool's greeting to match your decision and listen to it on a test call. A greeting may be left off the recording itself.
Before you start
- Admin access to your call tracking account and to Google Ads. The steps below use CallTrackingMetrics; other tools usually have similar settings under different names.
- The states you do business in, and a rough idea of where your callers ring from.
- A phone that is not on your business line, for the test call.
Find every system that records your calls
One call can be recorded by more than one system, and each system has its own setting.
- In CallTrackingMetrics, open Numbers, then Call Settings, and click Edit next to each configuration. Under Call Recordings, note whether Record inbound calls and Record outbound calls are on. Inbound recording is on by default, and each configuration covers only the numbers assigned to it.
- In Google Ads, go to Account settings in the Admin menu, open the Call ads drop-down and read the Call recording setting. Google turns it on by default for calls through its forwarding numbers where both numbers are in the US or Canada, unless it was turned off before or the business was identified as healthcare or financial services. It records only when call reporting is on, and not for calls from location assets.
- Write down any recording your phone system or answering service makes on its own. Those settings live outside both accounts.
Google says callers on its forwarding numbers hear a short automated message that the call will be recorded, and that by using the feature you acknowledge you have given notice to your agents, employees and anyone else on the call.
Read the rule that applies to your calls
This page cannot say which rule covers your calls; your state's statute does, and a lawyer can when callers ring from other states.
- Start with federal law. Under 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d), it is not unlawful for a person "not acting under color of law" to intercept a call "where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent", unless it is done to commit a criminal or tortious act.
- Then read your own state's statute on your state legislature's website. Some states ask more than federal law does. Washington, for one, requires "the consent of all the participants" to record a private telephone communication.
- Note how that state counts an announcement. Washington treats consent as obtained when one party announces the recording "in any reasonably effective manner", and adds that if the conversation is recorded, "said announcement shall also be recorded".
- Note where your callers are. Washington's statute covers communications "between points within or without the state". If many calls come from other states, ask a lawyer which rules reach those calls.
- Write down what you decided and the date, so the greeting has a reason on file when someone later asks why it is set that way.
Set the greeting to match, then listen to it
The greeting is a setting in the call tracking tool, and whatever it starts as was not chosen for your state.
- Check what the account started with. CallTrackingMetrics gives "For quality assurance, this call may be recorded." as its default message, while an account set up through an integration or by someone else can arrive with no greeting at all. Either can be right; neither was decided for you.
- In Numbers, Call Settings, click Edit next to a configuration and find Inbound Greeting under Call Greetings. CallTrackingMetrics' legal help page calls this field Play Message, in a Setup section. Type the message and select a voice, or record your own.
- Leave the greeting empty only if that is what you decided, and repeat the setting on every configuration whose numbers record calls.
- Know what the recording leaves out. CallTrackingMetrics says "Greeting messages are not included in call recordings", and its Record inbound start and Record from Ringing options do not record the greeting either. If your state's rule wants the announcement on the recording, ask the vendor how to capture it.
- To remind the people who answer, turn on an Account Level Whisper under Whispers (Agent Whisper Message). It plays a message to whoever picks up, such as "This call is recorded."
Check it worked
Call each tracking number from a phone that is not on your business line. You should hear the greeting you chose before the call rings through, or nothing if you chose none.
Open the call in the call log and play the recording. If the greeting is missing from the recording, that matches CallTrackingMetrics' note that greetings are not recorded. Where your state wants the announcement on the recording too, this is the gap to raise with the vendor. Note the date of the test call beside your written decision.
When Google and the call tracking tool both record one call
A call from the call button in an ad can pass through a Google forwarding number and then a tracking number, so both systems can record it and the caller can hear both messages. Each setting is separate: turning one off leaves the other recording.
Google says that with call recording off, calls from ads count as conversions by call length instead of its AI review of the recording.
What this page does not cover
This is general information, not legal advice. It quotes two statutes as examples of how the rules are written; it does not list every state or say which rule applies to a call between two states. Recording laws change, so read the current text of your own state's statute before relying on any summary, including this one.