Google Ads can only bid toward calls it knows about. This integration closes that loop: when a call qualifies under your rules, we upload it as a conversion, so Smart Bidding optimises toward the keywords that make the phone ring.
Tutorials / Google Ads
Only qualified calls upload — the ones passing your minimum duration, repeat-caller and business-hours rules — so you are not bidding toward wrong numbers and hang-ups. Each upload carries the call time and a conversion value, against a conversion action named for the campaign that produced it.
123-456-7890.Saving does two things beyond storing the IDs: it creates a conversion action for every Google-channel campaign that lacks one, and it queues any qualified call from the last 7 days that never got an upload — so connecting late does not cost you the week you already ran.
After saving, the Google Ads row may show one or both of these. Both are settings inside your Google Ads account, and both are worth clearing before you rely on the numbers.
Open Goals → Conversions → Settings in Google Ads and accept them (one-time, takes a minute). Until you do, calls with no website click cannot be reported at all — the hashed-number path depends on it. Website-click calls are unaffected. Re-save the integration afterwards to refresh the check.
Google will substitute its own forwarding number for any tracking number you put in a call asset, which means your number never displays and our attribution never sees the call. Press Turn off call reporting on the banner — we change the setting in your account for you. Irrelevant if you do not use call assets.
data-ct-number marker on whichever element shows your phone number.gclid on arrival and leases a tracking number to that visitor, which is what makes keyword-level attribution possible.Skipping the data-ct-number marker is the quiet failure mode: the tracker loads, nothing errors, your number never swaps, and no call is ever attributed.
Every Google-channel campaign gets its own conversion action in your Google Ads account, named after the campaign’s tracking number — Calls Tracking 3455 — or after the campaign itself when it has no dedicated number. They are created as Upload from clicks actions in the Qualified lead category, enabled, with a default value of 1.
You will find them under Goals → Conversions. Two things worth knowing there:
| Call comes from | Attribution path | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Website calls (DNI) | Deterministic click conversion | The visitor arrived from a Google ad, so our tracker captured their gclid. We upload the call against that click, and Google credits the exact campaign, ad group and keyword that earned it. |
| Call assets and call-only ads | Enhanced Conversions for Leads | There is no website visit and therefore no gclid, so we upload the caller number SHA-256 hashed. Google matches it against signed-in users who interacted with your ads. Match rates are partial by design — this path reports fewer conversions than it receives calls. |
A call with neither a click nor a caller number is parked rather than retried — there is nothing for Google to match it against.
Uploads run about a minute behind qualification and retry up to five times on failure. Google’s own reporting lags further — allow a few hours before judging whether a conversion arrived, and note that an upload we recorded as sent is proof Google accepted it, not proof it will be attributed.
Failures show in the Conversions column on the Calls page. The ones you are likely to meet:
credential_incompleteno_gclid_or_callerpartial_failure: … can't be founddeveloper_token_missingHTTP 404 with an HTML bodyNo upload at all? Only qualified calls fire one. Check the call’s status on the Calls page first — a call below your minimum duration, or a repeat caller inside your unique-caller window, is skipped by design.