Geo-Routing

Find out how Google’s latest change affects some businesses without them even knowing about it

Delacon recommends that some businesses may want to disable call reporting in their Google Ads to ensure desired call flow is not impacted, taking away from optimal customer experience.

This applies for businesses combining Call Extensions with automated geo-routing of calls, both being services also provided by Delacon (in addition to capabilities like IVR Listening to automatically segment calls based on caller intent and location). 

On Monday the 9th of September, Google Ads made changes that enable call reporting by default. This change impacts customers combining Call Extensions with automatic geo-routing. Even if you have disabled this function in your Google Ads in the past, it is likely that it was re-enabled.

While call reporting is enabled in Google Ads, when a potential customer clicks on an ad, the call will now pass through Google’s call forwarding number before going through the Call Extension and geo-routing services to the business. Google’s call forwarding number effectively removes the geographical location information required for the geo-routing to work.

Many businesses are not yet aware of this new change and how it may affect their customer’s experience.

If your business want the benefits of Call Extensions and automatic geo-routing, but have call reporting enabled in Google Ads, you may find calls going to a wrong location, being a default termination phone number instead, resulting in customer dissatisfaction.

Delacon recommends that you switch off the call reporting feature in the Google Ads platform to ensure call flow is not disrupted if this is of a concern. This will assure a smooth customer experience is maintained and customers are being routed to correct locations.

Note that you can still get such call reporting details via our integrations with Google Analytics and Search Ads360.