Debate: GMB Call Tracking - Yay or Nay?

[epicwebstudios]

If you notice, I provided a screencap in a later reply... somewhere in the settings there's an option to disconnect ("Google My Business Sync" I think it's called?)

 

[JonClassyBrain]

LSF friends,

Hoping you can help settle a debate that's been happening within the analytics team at my office about trackable phone numbers.

TLDR? -->
Implement call tracking on GMB despite obvious NAP/Citation conflicts: Yay or Nay?



While everyone agrees we would love to invest our 400+ clients into Twilio numbers or something similar, I am incredibly nervous it will mess with their ranking signals for both citations and overall SEO. Other folks say to get over it and implement since we'll never have a truly accurate count of ROI without it.

By placing a tracked phone number on their GMB listing only, won't that screw everything else up big-time and lead to an overall decrease in ranking? What have you done to implement tracking but avoid the NAP conflict?

I've read theory on adding the "actual" phone number as a second phone number to GMB, which will allow for NAP to remain in-tact. I've read others saying the 2nd number is not going to help to "save" any ranking signals at all. Has anyone tried this with proven and repeat success? I am doubtful moving the main number to second position and replacing top number with tracked phone is going to work.

I know AdWords offers ways around this, but our concern is mainly for GMB-related optimization, and we want a permanent solution that does not involve updating the citations on every single website and directory we come across. While a platform like MOZ Local would make this easier, there's simply no way it can grab literally every listing out there. Plus it defeats the purpose of call tracking in the first place.

Success/Horror stories? Ideas?

Postscript: We've read just about every article out there on this and we've never had a definitive answer provided in favor of call tracking. But if that's true, what's a marketer to do?

Thanks!
Epic Web


P.S.S. We would do this for most clients and absorb all costs because it's not the client who cares about call tracking, it's us, the agency. By tracking all GMB calls, we can truly prove an accurate ROI on our GMB efforts.

If you haven't bought Joy's Expert Guide to Local SEO I'd highly recommend it. In this guide, she mentions using the primary phone number as the secondary number on GMB and using the tracking number as the primary. I use this strategy with my clients and they have not lost rank in any way and we have the insight and recorded calls to make data-driven decisions. I've done this for 10+ businesses in multiple geographies.

 

[FriarTuck00]

Is there any way to keep Google from changing the numbers back? It seems like we have to go in and do this once a month with our clients.

 

[JonClassyBrain]

Is there any way to keep Google from changing the numbers back? It seems like we have to go in and do this once a month with our clients.

Nope. That is just how it is. It's not ideal and I hope GMB comes out with a workaround. My agency has to do this too.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yeah it only happens to some of our clients, not all. I haven't had time yet to figure out why that is.

 

[Dan Foland]

Nope. That is just how it is. It's not ideal and I hope GMB comes out with a workaround. My agency has to do this too.

Someone once told me "Google trusts everyone and no one at the same time." I think it describes GMB perfectly. GMB updates our tracking numbers regularly like all of you, no matter how often we correct it.

 

[Joe Mink]

Is there any way to keep Google from changing the numbers back? It seems like we have to go in and do this once a month with our clients.

Is there a possibility that you are using Moz Local and you have enabled 'overwrite listing details' through the API for clients that were already listed in your Moz Local account? We saw this happening with our GMB tracking URLs, so possibly the same with phone numbers.

 

[Vijay Marathe]

Has anybody noticed a drop in direct calls reported on GMB insights after adding the call tracking number as primary number? Could the unfamiliarity of the new number cause a drop?

Thanks!