How to Install Google Ads Call Tracking With Google Tag Manager

Navigate To Conversions In Google Ads

To reach conversions, navigate through tools and settings > measurement > conversions.

Create A New Google Ads Phone Call Conversion

If you already have conversions in your account, you can add a new one by navigating to Summary > New Conversion Action

If you don’t have any conversions in your account you will see a prompt, like the one below, to create a new conversion action.

Choose Your Conversion Type – Website Phone Calls

Select Phone Calls > Calls to a phone number on your website.

The other option for tracking interactions with a phone number is “Clicks on your number on your mobile website”. However, the “Calls to a phone number on your website” option can also track the interactions that would be included in this and allow you to filter phone calls under a certain length of time.

Configure A Google Ads Website Phone Call Conversion

We have included an example for configuring the Google Ads website call conversion below. We also go into more detail about the configuration options and how best to configure this in our guide to Google Ads call tracking.

Once configured, proceed to the next step to install your tag on the website.

Installing Google Call Tracking With Tag Manager

Once you reach stage two in creating the conversion action set up the tag, select that you are using Google Tag Manager and it will give you a conversion ID and conversion label to use in GTM. From here it is simply the case of copying these values.

Creating A Google Ads Calls from Website Conversion Tag

Create a tag in Google Tag Manager and copy the conversion label and conversion ID from Google and enter it into the below tag configuration.

Tag Configuration:

Tag name: Google Ads – Call Tracking

Tag type: Google Ads Calls from Website conversion

Displayed phone number: this needs to exactly match how the number is displayed on the website. In this case, we have used the fake number 0800 123 4567 for this example (this is not a real number). Use your own phone number here.

Conversion ID: generated from within Google Ads. Copy this from the previous step and use your conversion ID.

Conversion label: generated from within Google Ads. Copy this from the previous step and use your label.

Trigger: You want this to fire on all pages that display the phone number. If your phone number is in the header or footer of your website, this may be on an all pages page view trigger. However, in this example, we have configured a page view tag to fire on just the current page you are reading now.

Ensure The Conversion Linker Tag Is Setup

If you don’t have the conversion linker tag already set up, you will need to set this up now.

Check The Google Ads Call Tracking Works

After creating the tag, we will test if it is working as expected using GTM preview before publishing the changes.

To do this, we can navigate to the preview in the top right of the screen from within the Google Tag Manager workspace.

Connect to the website:

We can then check that the conversion linker and call tracking tags are firing.

And then by clicking on the tag details all the values are as expected.

Additionally, we can test if the phone number is swapping correctly to a Google forwarding number in two different ways.

1. Clicking through on an ad. When you click through on a Google Ad it will change the phone number to a Google forwarding number.
2. There is a URL fragment that can be included to test whether the phone number you want to be tracked is swapping correctly. This is useful as it doesn’t require you to be served an ad or incur the cost of clicking through on one.

You can append the URL fragment “#google-wcc-debug” to the end of your URL to trigger the Google Ads call tracking debug tool to pop up in the bottom left of the screen.

For example, on this URL this would look like this:

https://thedigitalmetric.com/install-google-ads-call-tracking/#google-wcc-debug

If you have any query parameters (after a “?”) put the fragment afterwards e.g.

https://thedigitalmetric.com/install-google-ads-call-tracking/?test=query#google-wcc-debug

Sometimes users run into issues using the Google debug fragment in Tag Manager preview, if you are having issues with the pop-up not displaying try minimising the preview window. If this doesn’t work, assuming your tags are correct, you may need to try publishing the container and then testing using the #google-wcc-debug fragment.

After entering this URL you should see a pop-up in the bottom left corner. If you click the “Force” Button, it will change the display numbers on the page based on the call tracking tag setup.

You will see how many numbers the call tracking has replaced in this debug pop up and additionally, you will be able to see if the numbers have changed correctly on the website.

You can try this now with this page by following the debug link and testing it on the example phone number below.

https://thedigitalmetric.com/install-google-ads-call-tracking/#google-wcc-debug

Example Phone Number

0800 123 4567

You will see it actually changes 2 phone numbers on this page. That is because there is the same number written earlier in the body text of the article!

Conclusion

That’s it! You have successfully installed Google Ads call tracking on your website. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.