Google’s Going After Call Tracking

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This week, Google made two important announcements that impact marketers who are trying to track calls from search, and/or control where the calls go.

The first change impacts those using location extensions. Effective January 19 – yes, in 2 weeks – Google “may” show the local phone number in your ad, instead of your desired number.

For many businesses, this is probably ok. For example, if I want to know the business hours for my local Best Buy, it makes sense to call that store, rather than a central number. But for many other businesses, this is a disaster. Local insurance companies, security offices, financial planners, and the like often prefer callers to dial a centralized call center, where representatives are prepared to handle the calls as leads. Local offices are often not set up to handle the volume and type of callers they receive from search ads.

Not to mention the fact that businesses may want to track phone calls through a central number. If calls start going to the local offices, they’ve lost control of tracking. We have more than one client who will be opting out of this, simply because they want granular call tracking.

The second change affects anyone using call extensions. Starting February 6 – yes, in less than a month – Google is going to automatically add mobile call extensions to advertisers who “prominently feature a phone number” on their landing pages.

Again, it’s possible to opt out of this. And again, for many advertisers, this is a nightmare. Let’s say you’re a retailer who only takes calls from 8am to 8pm, but can take online orders any time. Instead of deciding yourself whether or not to use mobile call extensions, and scheduling them to meet your needs, Google is going to just go ahead and show the phone number, no matter what. Yes, you can opt out, but how many businesses aren’t going to know or understand how to do that? I’m hearing on Twitter that not everyone received the email Google sent out (although we did receive it for all our applicable clients). And some less-sophisticated advertisers aren’t going to understand it anyway.

My first thought was that this is a disaster for those using dynamic call tracking on their landing pages. It seems to have the potential to totally screw up dynamic tracking. Thankfully, according to the Search Engine Land article, Google will be able to detect landing pages using dynamic call tracking, and will not generate the automatic call extensions for these ads. I’ll believe this when I see it, but for now it’s reassuring.

Here’s the crux of the whole thing, though. Google has a history of going after third-party providers. They went after bid management companies with automated bidding. They went after reporting companies with their new reporting features. And now they’re going after call tracking providers with this latest announcement.

Is this a bad thing? Well, I haven’t seen any third party bid management, reporting, or call tracking companies going belly up yet, at least not any of the major ones. But it’s still early. We all know what happened to third party web analytics when Google bought Urchin way back when and turned it into Google Analytics. Plenty of analytics providers went belly up – it just took a couple years.

I’m confident that third parties are here to stay when it comes to bid management, reporting, and call tracking. For one thing, third parties can report on data beyond Google AdWords. And they’re easier to work with than Google. But it’s kind of annoying to have to opt out of these “features” and “enhancements” all the time.

What do you think? Is Google trying to rule the world and run out third party providers? Or are the features good for most advertisers? Share in the comments!

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Comments

  1. Hi Melissa,

    So I just don’t think this is going to hurt anyone.

    SMBs don’t use extension or call tracking properly; so now if they have a phone number on their site, it’s automated, and they’ll get better results from AdWords.

    If you are tracking calls, then it takes about 3 seconds to opt out and this won’t be a problem for you.

    As Google doesn’t offer (due to privacy reasons) a lot of data, call recording, etc that 3rd parties do – anyone who is serious about calls and call analytics is going to opt out and use a 3rd party. Anyone who just needs an automated boost is going to get it.

    I think this is really a win-win for everyone. It brings more attention to calls, which can help the call tracking industry for those serious about it, and it automatically helps small companies who aren’t smart enough to set this all up properly.

    Just my $0.02.
    -brad

    • Melissa Mackey says

      Fair points! I still don’t like the short notice, and the fact that we have to opt in rather than opt out. But you’re right that businesses should want to track calls, and this makes it easier.

      • The short and very limited notices are a big deal – that I agree with. The fact that none of our accounts have been emailed about the change and it’s not been widely talked about is a problem and that communication with such short notice should be better.

        That I’ll gladly give you 🙂

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