Be Careful Not to Double Count Call Conversions in Adwords

Adwords Phone Call Conversion Tracking is Trickier than You Think

Our Google Team came out to Tandem Interactive's office in February to spend some time reviewing performance, forecasting for Q2, and reviewing the latest and greatest features of Adwords. We always cover pain points. I was ready for this because I have has issues with the phone call tracking as conversions since it launched back in October of 2013. The numbers do not match. Why not? They really did not know either, so we spent an hour together digging in until we found it.

What is the answer? It is simple. Right now, only “mobile click to call” calls count in the conversion column if they meet the conversion requirements (we set it for calls longer than 60 seconds). If you want to see the “manually dialed calls”, then you have to turn on the column in the campaign view for phone call conversions.

This does not sound like a big deal, but it is really confusing why mobile devices show in the conversion report as “calls from ads”. That report does not count manual dials, even though they are also “call from ads”. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that the conversion report only displays "many per click" conversions. The regular campaign reports (and normal counting) reflect "1 per click" conversions.

These are the settings for the conversion tracking. We are using one for mobile tracking and another for non-mobile.

So what is the proper way to count conversions at the moment?

Option 1: Just add the phone call conversions to regular conversions column and that will count mobile and manually dialed together.

Option 2: Segment "mobile click to call" conversions from the conversions column. Subtract them from the conversions and add to phone conversions total. This can be done by looking at the conversion report mentioned above, or by adding "segment by device" to the campaign reporting and do it manually.

Option 3: Remove the conversion tracking and just keep the call tracking separate. This is a double edge sword if you are using conversion optimizer. We have a specific account where counting the mobile click to calls is causing a problem, but we do not want that call conversion data being kept from Google's conversion optimizer formula either.

In the most simple of reports, be careful not to double count call conversions in Adwords. Since the regular conversions can count the mobile click to calls, if you just add all calls to that number as conversions, you will be double counting the mobile click to calls!

This reporting / conversion counting has to get better from Google. The current division of the phone call conversions is not intuitive.