How-to · Updated October 11, 2026
Put a call tracking number on your Business Profile without breaking Google's rules
Updated October 11, 2026
20 minutes
Give the profile its own fixed number from a call tracking account in your business's name, ringing your own line. Make it the primary phone under Edit profile, Contact, and keep your main number as additional. Never reuse a number shown to ad visitors: it keeps ringing when ads pause, so listing calls look like ad calls.
Before you start
- A call tracking account in the business's name. Google requires the profile's number to be under the direct control of the business, and a number held on someone else's account may not count as that.
- One new local number for the profile alone. Not a number from the pool your website shows to ad visitors, and not the one in your ads. Google prefers a local number to a central helpline wherever possible.
- Owner or manager access to the profile. Both roles can edit the phone number.
Set up a number that meets Google's rules
Set up one fixed tracking number, in an account the business controls, that rings your own line and does nothing else.
- In your call tracking tool, such as CallTrackingMetrics, create a source for the Business Profile alone with one fixed number that never rotates. Name it so reports show these calls as coming from the profile.
- Route the number to the same line your main number rings, at the same hours.
- Call it from a phone that has not called it before. Confirm it rings through and the call shows under the Business Profile source.
- Never use a Google forwarding number from Google Ads for this. Google says those numbers belong to Google, can change or be reassigned, and may only be used for call reporting and website call conversions.
Put it on the profile
Make the tracking number the profile's primary phone and keep your main number on the profile as an additional one.
- Go to your Business Profile and select Edit profile, then Contact.
- Next to Phone number, select Edit.
- Replace the primary number with the tracking number.
- Select Add phone number and enter your main number. Google allows up to 2 more numbers beside the primary one.
- Select Save.
Keeping the main number in the profile means one edit puts it back as primary if the tracking account ever closes.
Keep listing calls and ad calls apart
Give the profile's number no other job, since calls from the profile's call button never load your website and that number is the only way to see them as calls in your tracking tool.
- If the profile is linked to Google Ads, open More, Business Profile settings, then Advanced settings, and look at Google Ads phone number. Google says this lets the location asset in your ads show a different number from the profile, and without one Google Ads uses the profile's primary number. Put the ads' number there so calls from the location asset stay off the profile's number.
- Keep the profile's number off your website, your ads and your printed material. A number printed in several places can no longer say where a call came from.
- When ads pause, expect the website's ad-visitor numbers to go quiet, but not this one. If the profile number is silent for a week while the listing is live, test-call it.
Check it worked
Google reviews profile changes before they go live. They usually show in about 10 minutes and can take up to 30 days.
Once the new number shows, search your business on a phone, tap the call button on the profile, and confirm the call arrives in your tracking tool under the Business Profile source.
After a few weeks, compare your tracked calls with Calls in the profile's performance report. Google counts taps on the call button there, not connected calls, and its performance data includes actions from Google Ads, so expect the two to differ.
Why a number from the ad-visitor pool fails here
Website tracking usually shows a pool of numbers only to visitors who arrived from an ad. Printed on the profile, one of those numbers also takes the listing's unpaid calls, so the tracker files them as ad calls and your ads look better than they are.
It also confuses the quiet weeks. With every campaign paused, a pool number on the profile keeps ringing, so the ads seem to be bringing calls they are not, and a drop in that number's calls looks like an ad problem when the listing is what changed.
How a tracking number reads against Google's phone rules
Google's guidelines do not mention call tracking by name. They ask for a number that connects to your location, is under the direct control of the business, and does not redirect callers to anyone other than the actual business.
A tracking number in the business's own account that rings its own line meets each of those as written. That reading is a judgment, not a statement from Google.