How to Track Calls From Google Ads, and Match Them to Signed Jobs

Your phone rings all day. Some calls come from the ads, some from your Google Business Profile, some from the sign on your truck. Your ad report shows clicks, and nobody can tell you which calls came from the ads, let alone which ones turned into a booked estimate or a signed job.

Here is the answer. Google Ads can track three kinds of calls: calls from the call button on your ad, calls to the number on your website from people who clicked an ad, and taps on your phone number on a mobile page. Turn on call reporting so Google forwarding numbers carry the first two, set a minimum call length, make those two your primary conversions and keep phone taps as secondary. Then, once a month, match the calls to your estimates and jobs.

The three calls Google Ads can count

Call type	What it counts	What it takes
Calls from ads	Calls from the call button on your ad (a call asset)	Call reporting on
Calls from your website	Calls to your site's number from people who clicked an ad	Call reporting, the Google tag and a phone snippet
Phone number taps	Taps on your number on a mobile page	The Google tag and a click event

Google lists these, plus imported calls, on its page about phone call conversion tracking. Google is clear that tap tracking counts the tap, not the call.

If you still run call-only ads, plan the switch now. Google stopped letting advertisers create new call-only ads in February 2026, and existing ones stop showing in February 2027 (Google's notice). Call assets on your responsive search ads take their place.

Before you start: turn on call reporting

Call reporting puts a Google forwarding number on your ads and passes each call through to your real line. Turn it on under Admin > Account settings > Call reporting > On > Save (Google's steps). Forwarding numbers are available in Canada, the United States and a list of other countries (about call reporting).

You get a lot back. The Call details report lists each call's start time, duration, caller area code, status (missed or received), campaign and search keyword, and for most calls longer than 15 seconds, the caller's phone number (call details). That last column is what lets you match calls to jobs later.

Step 1: Calls from your ads

1. Go to Campaigns > Assets, click the plus icon, select Call, and add your business number to the account or to each Search campaign (call assets). With call reporting on, Google shows a forwarding number in its place.
2. Go to Goals > Summary > + Create conversion action, select Conversions from phone calls, then Save and continue, and pick Phone call lead as the category (Google's steps).
3. Choose Calls from ads, set the minimum call length (more on that below), and leave Count on One, which Google uses as the default for calls (counting options).

Step 2: Calls from your website after an ad click

Plenty of people who click your ad read your page first and call from there. This conversion catches those calls.

1. In the same conversion flow, choose Calls from website visits, and enter your number exactly as it's printed on your site.
2. Install the Google tag and the phone snippet Google gives you, or in Google Tag Manager add a Google Ads Calls from Website Conversion tag (setup).
3. Print the number as text on the page. The snippet swaps a number it can read, and a number inside an image stays as it is.
4. Test it: search for your ad, click it, and check that the number on the page changed. Before a second test, delete the "gwcc" cookie. Google says it can take up to an hour for the swap to start working.

The swap happens only for people who arrived from an ad. Visitors from your Business Profile and organic search see your real number, so ad calls stay separate from everything else.

Step 3: Taps on your number on mobile

Go to Goals > Summary > + Create conversion action > Conversions from phone calls, choose the website calls option, then Someone makes a call by clicking a number on my website, and add the event to your call buttons (Google's steps). If your site already sends a phone-click event to Google Analytics, you can mark it as a key event and import it into Google Ads instead.

Thor Construction, a new Ontario contractor that did $1.5M in revenue in 2025 on $35K of ad spend (Canadian dollars), tracks phone clicks on every page of its site. For a contractor, the call is often the lead, so it gets counted wherever it happens.

Set the call length from your own calls

A call counts as a conversion only when it lasts longer than the minimum you set. Set it too short, and every wrong number and "is this the company I searched for?" call counts as a lead. Set it too long, and quick estimate bookings drop out of the count.

Take the number from your own data. After two weeks of call reporting, open the Call details report, sort by Duration, and write down what the short calls were about. Set the minimum just above the point where the wrong numbers end.

Call recording changes this. For eligible accounts, Google now turns call recording on by default, for calls where both numbers are in the US or Canada, and callers hear a short message that the call is recorded (call recording settings). With recording on, Google's AI reviews each call, and only calls with real intent, such as asking about a service or booking a visit, count as conversions. Calls it can't record fall back to your call length (AI-qualified call leads). You'll find the switch under Admin > Account settings > Call ads > Call recording.

Primary or secondary

Primary conversions show in the Conversions column and steer automated bidding. Secondary conversions are for observation and show only in All conversions (primary and secondary).

• Primary: calls from ads, calls from your website, and your form submissions.
• Secondary: Phone number taps.

Taps go to secondary for two reasons. A tap isn't a call, so bidding on taps teaches Google to find people who tap. And someone who taps your swapped number on mobile and talks long enough already counts as a website call, so making both primary counts one call twice.

The part most guides skip: from calls to signed jobs

Google now knows a call happened and how long it lasted. It doesn't know whether you booked an estimate or signed the job. That part lives in your calendar and your invoices, and it's the part that tells you whether the ads pay.

Start with a simple sheet, once a month:

1. Export the month's Call details report with start time, duration, status, caller area code, caller phone number, campaign and keyword.
2. Add four columns: In our area, Job type, Estimate booked, Job signed (with the job value).
3. Match each call to your calendar and job list by phone number. If whoever answers the phone notes the caller's town and the job on every estimate, this step takes minutes.
4. Check area codes for out-of-area patterns, with one caveat. Mobile numbers travel, so someone living down the road can carry a city number from years ago. Treat the area code as a clue and the property address as the answer.
5. Look at the missed calls. Every missed call from an ad is a paid click that nobody answered. If that list is long, fix your lead follow-up before you add budget.
6. Do the math. Ad spend divided by signed jobs from the ads is your cost per signed job, and that's the number that tells you whether the ads earn their keep.

A month of rows looks like this:

Date	Caller area	Duration	Keyword	In area	Job	Estimate	Signed
Oct 3	Local code	4:12	septic bed replacement	Yes	Replacement	Yes	Yes
Oct 4	City code	0:38	septic installer	No	Pump-out	No	No
Oct 6	City code	6:05	new septic system	Yes	New install	Yes	Pending

The third row is why the area code is only a clue: a city number, and a real job in your area.

If your out-of-area rows pile up, our guide to Google Ads calls from outside your service area covers the causes and the fixes.

The next step: send signed jobs back to Google

Once the sheet runs smoothly, send its results back to Google. Import phone call conversions lets you upload the caller's phone number, the call's start time and a conversion name such as "Signed job" for calls that came through a Google forwarding number (importing call conversions). For form leads, enhanced conversions for leads matches hashed contact details from your form to the sales you upload.

With signed jobs in the account, you can see which keywords and campaigns produce jobs, and in time bid toward them. Keep the import as a secondary conversion until there are enough signed jobs each month for bidding to learn from. If you're comparing channels, the same sheet settles Local Services Ads against Search ads.

If you would rather hand this to a team

Conversion tracking is where our team starts with every home service account: calls and forms counted by campaign, then matched to booked estimates and signed jobs, so the monthly report shows cost per signed job. Book a call and we'll set it up with you.