Have a question about reported calls in Smart campaigns that aren't covered elsewhere? Here are a few common questions about reported calls. Click any of the headings below to learn more information.
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- I receive calls while my business is closed
- There’s a different or incorrect phone number in my ad
- I can't find the Google forwarding number (GFN) in my ad
- I didn't receive as many calls as I expected
Many businesses use a voice mail system, answering machine, or answering service to handle potentially valuable calls that come in after normal business hours.
Without a voicemail or a call service, unanswered calls after your business hours don't appear in your reports. We won't bill you for these calls.
To prevent your ads from showing when your business is closed, schedule your ads to only show when your business is open by setting up Ad Scheduling. Learn more about ad scheduling
If you turn on reported calls, we'll assign a Google forwarding number (GFN) to your ad. The GFN appears in your Smart campaign on either the desktop or mobile versions of Google search. This phone number will forward calls to your actual business phone number, and allows us to measure the number of calls that you receive.
If reported calls have already been activated for your ad, here are some common reasons why you may not find a Google forwarding number in your ad:
- Google search vs. Google Maps: GFNs only appear on ads that appeared on the mobile or desktop versions of Google search. For now, reported calls exclude data from Google Maps.
- Low search volume: You might not get a GFN for search terms with low volume.
- Ads without reported calls: The reported calls feature is available at the ad level, rather than at the business level. This means that if you have multiple ads, but you haven’t enabled reported calls for all of them, the forwarding number only appears in the ads where you enabled reported calls.
Here are some possible reasons why your reported call volume may be affected:
- Google search vs. Google Maps: Reported calls track only calls that originated from Smart campaigns that ran on Google search. Currently, calls from Google Maps aren't included.
- Low search volume: A GFN might not be assigned to search terms with very low search volume.
- Ads without reported calls: If you have multiple ads for your business, but you haven’t enabled reported calls for all of them, you’ll find calls only for the ads enabled with reported calls.