Tracking Phone Numbers in Google My Business Listings and Beyond

[Davey_Tree]

Hey all,

Wanted to run something by you. I am getting pressed to use tracking phone numbers for all of our GMB pages for over 100 locations across the country. Has anyone done this for their own listings or for their clients? Because I will have to do it for GMB, this means I will be sending these same phone numbers out to the other major directories and data sources around the web.

The phone numbers do contain the local area code for each city and do directly connect our customers to their specific location without any kind of redirecting.

How is Google looking at this? I have read before it is a no-no but have also read it is not a big deal. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

-Ben

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Ben,

There is a secret to doing this that won't mess up your NAP consistency or ranking.  What you need to do is move the "real" phone number to the secondary phone line inside Google My Business and then use the tracking number in the main phone number slot.

Whatever you do, don't use the tracking numbers on any other 3rd party citations.

[Davey_Tree]

Thanks for answering again Joy!

Yea this is definitely risky territory. We track EVERYTHING here so even if we had amazing local pack results across the board it would mean very little if we couldn't track it. I am for sure going to try the secondary number in GMB.

Would you say to do the same thing for Bing as well? We also want to use tracking numbers for Yelp where we draw a good amount of traffic and engagement from.

Thanks!

-Ben

[JoyHawkins]

I've never tried it for Bing so I'm not 100% sure.  I would not suggest doing this on Yelp.

[Davey_Tree]

Hey Joy,

Thanks again for helping out with this. So what if you are using tracking numbers that stay static, also have the real local area code in each one and send the user directly to the office with no redirects?

Essentially they have all of the real characteristics of the real office number except it's a tracking number? How would Google really know, or see that as inconsistent if we blasted that out to all of the aggregators through a platform like MOZ Local?

Thanks!

-Ben

[JoyHawkins]

Ben,

If your goal is to replace every single phone number online with the tracking number, that's fine.  In my experience it is almost impossible to keep the old phone number from re-populating since it's published in offline sources (like the phone book).

What I was recommending would be good if you wanted to isolate/track JUST the calls from GMB.

[Davey_Tree]

Hey Joy,

Yea it definitely is pretty much impossible to get that to populate. We are trying to work through some options with our tracking company since we want to be as consistent as possible. Thanks so much for your help it is much appreciated and I turned to different possibilities thanks to your advice!

-Ben