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How to Track Phone Calls in Google Analytics

Cody Schneider•

If your business relies on phone calls for leads or sales, you're likely missing a huge piece of your marketing data puzzle. Your website analytics show how users click around, but what happens when they pick up the phone? This article will show you exactly how to track phone call conversions in Google Analytics 4, giving you a complete view of which marketing channels are making your phone ring.

Why Is Tracking Phone Calls So Important?

For many businesses, a phone call is the most valuable conversion you can get. It represents a high-intent lead that's much closer to becoming a customer than someone who just fills out a contact form. When you don't track these calls, you're flying blind. You might be pouring money into a Google Ads campaign that looks like a dud on paper but is actually generating dozens of high-quality phone leads.

By connecting phone calls to Google Analytics, you can finally achieve:

  • Complete ROI Analysis: Attribute leads directly to the specific marketing campaigns, keywords, or pages that drove them. Is that new blog post generating calls? Is your Facebook campaign driving sales conversations? Now you'll know.

  • A Full Customer Journey View: See how users interact with your site before they make a call. Understanding this path helps you optimize your website to encourage more valuable actions.

  • Smarter Budget Allocation: Stop guessing where to spend your marketing budget. With clear data, you can double down on the channels that are proven to generate not just clicks, but actual customer calls.

Methods for Tracking Phone Calls in GA4

There are three primary ways to track phone calls in Google Analytics, each with its own level of complexity and insight. We'll walk through them from simplest to most advanced.

  1. Tracking "tel:" Link Clicks in GA4 directly: This is the simplest method and a great starting point. It tracks when a user clicks a hyperlinked phone number (like on a mobile device), which is a strong indicator of an intent to call.

  2. Using Google Tag Manager (GTM): This method offers more control and flexibility than GA4's native settings for tracking those same "click-to-call" events. If you're already using GTM, this is a clean and powerful way to manage your event tracking.

  3. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI): This is the gold standard for call tracking. It uses specialized third-party software to display unique phone numbers based on how a user arrived on your site, allowing you to track the exact source of every single call - even if the user just writes the number down and dials it later.

Method 1: Track Clicks on Your Phone Number in GA4

The easiest way to get started is by tracking clicks on clickable phone numbers on your website. These are the links that start with "tel:", which mobile browsers recognize and use to open the phone's keypad.

By default, GA4's "Enhanced measurement" feature automatically tracks outbound link clicks. Since a "tel:" link points away from your website (to the phone's dialer application), GA4 already captures a general "click" event for it. Our job is to isolate these specific phone number clicks and turn them into a unique, trackable event.

Step 1: Create a Custom Event for Phone Clicks

First, we need to tell GA4 to look for those generic "click" events that are actually "tel:" link clicks and re-label them as something more meaningful, like "phone_call_click."

  1. Navigate to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account (the gear icon in the bottom-left).

  2. Under the Property column, click on Events.

  3. Click the Create event button.

  4. On the next screen, click Create again to define your new event.

  5. Now, let's configure the event:

    • Custom event name: Give your new event a clear name. Something like "phone_call_click" is perfect. Avoid spaces and use underscores.

    • Matching Conditions: This is where you tell GA4 how to identify the right click. You'll set two conditions:

      • In the first row, set "event_name" | equals | "click".

      • Click Add condition. In the second row, set "link_url" | starts with | "tel:".

    • Your configuration should now look like this: When GA4 sees a general "click" event where the link URL starts with "tel:", it will create a new, separate event called "phone_call_click".

  6. Click Create in the top-right to save your new event.

It can take up to 24 hours for this new event to start appearing in your reports, but any time a user clicks a "tel:" link on your site from now on, GA4 will record it as a "phone_call_click" event.

Step 2: Mark Your New Event as a Conversion

Just creating the event isn't enough. You need to tell GA4 that this event is a valuable business outcome - a conversion. This allows you to see phone calls in your most important acquisition and conversion reports.

  1. Go back to Admin.

  2. Under the Property column, click on Conversions.

  3. Click the New conversion event button.

  4. In the text box, type the exact name of the custom event you just created: "phone_call_click".

  5. Click Save.

That's it! GA4 will now treat every "phone_call_click" event as a formal conversion, giving you proper credit in your marketing channel reports.

Method 2: Use Google Tag Manager for Better Control

If you prefer to manage all your website tracking tags in one place, using Google Tag Manager (GTM) is an excellent choice. It provides a more robust and scalable way to track events.

Step 1: Create a Trigger in GTM

First, we need to create a "trigger" that tells GTM when to fire. In our case, the trigger condition is a user clicking on a phone link.

  1. Inside your GTM container, navigate to Triggers in the left-hand menu and click New.

  2. Give your trigger a name, like "Phone Link Click Trigger".

  3. Click on the Trigger Configuration box.

  4. Under the Click section, choose Just Links.

  5. Select the radio button for Some Link Clicks.

  6. Set the condition to fire when Click URL | starts with | "tel:".

  7. Click Save.

Step 2: Create a Tag in GTM

Now that GTM knows when to fire, we need to create a "tag" that tells it what to do - which is to send an event to GA4.

  1. Navigate to Tags in the left menu and click New.

  2. Name your tag something descriptive, like "GA4 Event - Phone Call Click".

  3. Click on the Tag Configuration box.

  4. Choose Google Analytics: GA4 Event as the tag type.

  5. Select your main GA4 Configuration Tag from the dropdown menu. (If you don't have one, you'll need to set it up first by pasting your GA4 Measurement ID.)

  6. For the Event Name, enter what you want the event to be called in GA4. Again, "phone_call_click" is a good choice.

  7. Now, click the Triggering box at the bottom.

  8. Select the "Phone Link Click Trigger" you created in the previous step.

  9. Click Save.

Step 3: Test and Publish Your Changes

Before making your changes live, it's critical to test them. Just click the Preview button in GTM's top-right corner. This will open your website in a debug mode. Click on a phone number link on your site and watch the GTM debug panel. You should see your "GA4 Event - Phone Call Click" tag fire. Once you've confirmed it's working, go back to GTM Submit to publish your changes.

Finally, remember to mark "phone_call_click" as a conversion in the GA4 Admin settings, just as described in Method 1.

Method 3: Dynamic Number Insertion (The Ultimate Solution)

Both methods above are great, but they share a key limitation: they only track clicks, not actual phone calls. What happens if a desktop user sees your number and dials it from their cell phone? You miss that conversion data entirely.

This is where Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) comes in. DNI service providers give you a pool of trackable phone numbers. You install a javascript snippet on your site, and their software will automatically display a unique phone number to visitors based on where they came from.

  • A user from Google Organic search might see (555) 123-4001.

  • A user who clicked a Facebook Ad might see (555) 123-4002.

  • A user from a paid Google ad might see (555) 123-4003.

When someone calls one of these unique numbers, the DNI provider's system automatically forwards the call to your main business line, but it records all the session data behind the scenes: the source, medium, campaign, and sometimes even the keyword. It then sends this rich conversion data directly to Google Analytics as a custom event named something like "phone_call".

Popular DNI services include:

  • CallRail

  • WhatConverts

  • CallTrackingMetrics

  • ResponseTap

Setting this up involves signing up for one of these services and following their integration guide for Google Analytics 4. While it comes with a monthly subscription fee, the quality of data DNI provides is unmatched. It gives you true, verifiable data on every single phone call, not just educated guesses based on clicks.

Final Thoughts

Tracking phone calls brings you one giant step closer to seeing the full picture of your marketing performance. By implementing one of these methods - from a simple GA4 event to a full-fledged Dynamic Number Insertion system - you can finally give proper credit to the channels that make your phone ring and make far smarter decisions with your budget.

After getting all of this valuable conversion data into Google Analytics, the next challenge is quickly making sense of it. This is exactly why we built Graphed. Instead of manually building reports in GA4 to compare phone call data against ad spend, sessions, and other metrics, we let you use natural language to get answers instantly. You can connect Google Analytics and your other marketing sources, then just ask, "Show me a dashboard of my monthly leads, comparing form fills and phone call conversions by channel," and get the report you need in seconds, all powered by real-time data.