How to count phone orders in Google Ads

Someone clicks your ad, reads the product page, then rings your sales office and places an order. As far as Google Ads knows, that click was money wasted.

You can count phone orders in Google Ads in three ways: counting the calls, telling Google which tracked calls became sales, or sending real orders from your ERP (the system that holds your orders and stock) matched back to the ad click. Each one is more accurate than the last and takes more work, and some phone orders can never be attributed whichever you choose.

This matters because Smart Bidding, Google’s automated bidding, can only act on results it has been told about. If a good share of your revenue arrives by phone, it’s steering with a view of your website alone.

The simplest option: count the calls

Google Ads can record a call as a conversion (a result it counts) in several ways, and most of them rely on a Google forwarding number. That’s a number Google shows in place of your real one so it can see the call happen, before passing it straight through to your line. The UK is on Google’s list of countries where these numbers are available.

• Calls from ads. Your number appears on a call-only ad or as a call asset (a phone number attached to a normal ad), with call reporting turned on.
• Calls from your website. A small piece of code swaps the number on your site for a forwarding number, only for people who arrived from an ad.
• Taps on a number on your mobile site. Easy to set up, but Google says it can only track the tap and not the call that follows.

You choose a minimum call length, and every call that lasts that long counts as a conversion. That’s the weakness. A long call can be a complaint, a supplier or someone chasing a delivery, so all you’ve really told Google is that a conversation took place.

There’s one trap for UK sites. Google notes that the website call tag in Google Tag Manager isn’t compatible with international number formats, which can leave a stray plus sign on your page. Its advice is to use the national format without the plus.

A better option: tell Google which calls became sales

This is known as call conversion import. It turns “a call happened” into “that call became a sale worth this much”.

Your phone system or sales team records the caller’s number and whether the call led to a sale. That record is then sent to Google Ads, which matches it against the calls it tracked, and you can include the value of the sale.

The requirements are strict. Google says import needs forwarding numbers, so it only covers calls Google saw in the first place. For calls direct from ads, it says these can only be tracked from mobile and not from desktop or tablet. Someone also has to log the outcomes reliably, and any process that relies on busy staff remembering to tick a box will drift over time.

Google’s newer route for sending this kind of data, the Data Manager API, added support for Google Ads call conversions on 4 November 2026. An API is simply a way for one system to send data to another, and our Data Manager API guide explains why Google is moving these uploads there.

The most accurate option: match orders from your ERP

Here the ERP supplies the real outcome: the actual order and its actual value, including orders that were phoned in and never touched your website. The hard part is connecting that order back to an ad click, and there are two ways of attempting it.

A click ID saved against the customer. Google adds a code to your ad link when someone clicks it. If that person fills in a quote form or registers on your site before ringing, your site can save the code against their record, and the eventual order can be sent back with it.

Scrambled contact details. The customer’s email address or phone number is converted into a code that can be compared but not read, a process known as hashing. Google compares it with details collected by your website’s tracking and with signed-in Google accounts, so it stands the best chance when the customer gave the same details on your site before they rang.

Neither route can work from a bare order. An ERP record with no email address or phone number, and no earlier visit to your site, gives Google nothing to match against. We’d look at how complete that data is before spending anything, and an export of recent phone orders will show you quickly.

Consent applies here too. Someone who declined tracking on your website shouldn’t be matched as though they’d agreed, and the rules for details taken over the phone are a question for your own advisers.

What can’t be attributed?

Some phone orders will stay invisible to Google Ads, and you’re better off accepting that than trying to paper over it.

• Trade customers who ring their usual contact using the number on an old invoice.
• Someone who saw your ad, never clicked it and rang later after looking you up.
• A buyer who clicked on a work computer and ordered under a colleague’s name and email address.
• Callers who withhold their number, leaving a call import with nothing to record.
• Orders taken with no contact details on them.
• People who declined consent, who shouldn’t be tracked in the first place.
• Calls to a number printed on a van, a brochure or a business card.

Sending every phone order to Google regardless won’t help, because it can only credit the ones it can match. Adding an estimated share of phone orders to a spreadsheet can make a report look tidier, but it tells you nothing about which keyword produced them.

Which option should you choose?

If you do nothing about phone orders today, start by counting calls, as it’s the smallest step and already better than silence. Move on to importing outcomes if the phone is your main sales route and your team reliably logs what happened on each call.

ERP matching makes sense when phone orders are a meaningful share of revenue and your customers usually start online, with a quote form, a trade account or a basket. You may well end up running the first option alongside the third.

How do you stop one sale being counted twice?

If you count a call and also send the resulting order from your ERP, one sale can appear twice. Keep only one of them as primary, the setting that decides what bidding learns from, and leave the other as secondary so you can still see it in reports. Using the same order number everywhere helps as well.

We’ve covered the wider problem in our guide to duplicate conversions, and it’s far easier to set this up correctly than to untangle it later.

How do you get ERP orders into Google Ads?

Someone has to pull the right orders out of your ERP, work out which have something to match on, tidy the contact details into the format Google expects and send them across. That needs doing on a regular schedule, and something has to notice when it stops.

Our ERP order values service does this for Linnworks, Unleashed, Brightpearl and Sage 200, so that real order values, phone orders included, are what your bidding sees. It’s built in your own accounts and scoped first, then fixed-price from £2,500 depending on the systems involved. If you’d like to know whether your orders carry enough detail to match, send us a note and we’ll tell you honestly.