Google Ends Call Tracking: What You Need to Know

You may have seen Google's recent email about discontinuing the call tracking feature for Google Business profiles. If you're puzzled by this decision, you're not alone. Rather than speculate on their reasons, let's discuss the implications moving forward.

For those unfamiliar with this metric, call tracking indicates how many people clicked the call button or your phone number on your Google business profile. It's a valuable tool for assessing performance on Google Maps, alongside other metrics like website clicks and direction lookups. Losing this feature is a significant setback for reporting. The change takes effect on July 31st, giving businesses some time to decide if this impacts them and explore alternative call tracking options if necessary.

If call tracking is crucial for your business, you can use third-party call-tracking systems. These systems provide a new number to display on your Google Business Profile, which redirects calls to your actual number. This allows you to track and report call frequency. However, this workaround isn't as seamless as Google's built-in solution and can cause discrepancies, such as having different phone numbers on Apple Maps and Bing, potentially confusing customers and search engines.

For now, it might be wise to wait and see if Google announces any new solutions for call tracking. Rushing to implement an alternative could create more problems than it solves.