# Most of our customers ring. I see none of that in Google Ads. How do you count calls? | Illia BizTech > Four in five jobs come by phone, the account shows three conversions against 640 euros. The landline shows nothing about where the caller came from. Source: https://illia-biztech.de/en/forum/most-of-our-customers-ring-i-see-none-of-that-in-google-ads-how-do-you-count-calls 1. [Home](/en) 2. [Forum](/en/forum) 3. Most of our customers ring. I see none of that in Google Ads. How do you count calls? # Most of our customers ring. I see none of that in Google Ads. How do you count calls? Four in five jobs come by phone, the account shows three conversions against 640 euros. The landline shows nothing about where the caller came from. * ##### Asked on September 1, 2026 About four in five of our jobs come in by telephone; hardly anybody uses the form. So Google Ads shows almost nothing: three conversions last month against 640 euros of spend, while my instinct says a good twenty people actually rang. I added the number as a call extension, and since then I can see clicks on the extension but no calls recorded as conversions. On the landline all I can see is the caller's number, not where they came from. #### Answers ![Portrait of Alina Belichenko, content and social media specialist](/_ipx/f_webp,q_75/https://cms.illia-biztech.de/uploads/small_Alina_Belichenko_author_ae667ebec9.png) ##### Alina Belichenko ✓ Accepted answer September 2, 2026 A click on the number and a conversation that actually happened are two different events, and so far you are only measuring the first. What is missing is call reporting. With it switched on, Google assigns the ad [a forwarding number and reports duration, start time and, from fifteen seconds onwards, the caller's number](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2454052?hl=en). The call still comes through to you, simply by way of an intermediate number, and only then does a click become a countable enquiry. Germany does have these forwarding numbers, as [Google's country list shows](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2382961?hl=en), but with a footnote: here a toll-free number is issued rather than a local one. That is the point worth pausing on. For a business whose customers value a supplier from their own area, an 0800 number in the ad can weaken the sense of being local. The duration at which a call counts as a conversion is yours to set, and without call recording [Google falls back on exactly that minimum duration](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095882?hl=de). Set it at something that separates a real conversation from a misdial; sixty seconds is a common starting point. Leave call recording alone. The automated analysis of recordings is restricted to the United States and Canada anyway, and in Germany recording a conversation without consent is [a criminal offence](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/%5F%5F201.html). And for the part Google will never see, your ordinary landline number on the website: if you want to know how many calls come from there, you need either a separate number for the site or the simplest method of all, asking on the call how the person found you. At twenty calls a month that costs you a tally sheet next to the phone. ![Portrait of Illia Belichenko, technical specialist at Illia BizTech](/_ipx/f_webp,q_75/https://cms.illia-biztech.de/uploads/small_Illia_Belichenko_author_81f88864f0.png) ##### Illia Belichenko September 3, 2026 A separate number for the website needs care. Yours sits in the business profile, in the Impressum and in the directories, and Google compares those entries. Keep the familiar number in all of them and put the second one only where you want to measure, in the ad and on the page it leads to. Then check two things. First, that a call back to the displayed number reaches you, because customers write it down. Second, which number the customer sees when you call them back yourself. To someone looking for a local supplier, a toll-free number reads differently from a local one. ##### #### [The quote was 6,000 euros and the invoice came to 9,500\. Do we have to pay it?](/en/forum/the-quote-was-6-000-euros-and-the-invoice-came-to-9-500-do-we-have-to-pay-it) September 5, 2026 [](/en/forum/the-quote-was-6-000-euros-and-the-invoice-came-to-9-500-do-we-have-to-pay-it) #### [The confirmation email from our contact form lands in customers' spam. 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