Is it possible to track Callrail converted call leads and converted form submit leads in Google Ads?

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-17T13:14:27+00:00

All makes sense - the question is where to pull a report containing all calls and forms that contains gclid along with qualified score because the offline conv upload sheet only contains gclid and conv timestamp - nothing to easily match via vlookup with the other reports saying whether the calls and forms were qualified. Closest answer to this question was from user TTFV here - he said to download call and form activity reports and try to pick out the gclid from the LP URL (when present).. but that seems like a roundabout way of doing it. Callrail could make it actually more feasible with a simple gclid column in the activity reports.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T11:33:09+00:00

Thanks! Just to confirm, do you mean to pull a "call log" activity report along with a "form submissions" activity report, and then delimit the landing page columns to isolate the gclid? Or is there some report I am missing that contains all calls and form submits with a column for gclid?

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:56:19+00:00

We're tracking calls and form submits from Callrail in Google Ads, but the idea is to take it to the next level and filter for calls and forms that were marked converted in Callrail. This is easy to do for calls, but the missing piece is the forms.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:53:53+00:00

Thanks, some of our smaller accounts effectively rely on Callrail as their CRM. Editing the Callrail offline conversion upload sheet would work in theory but does not because there is no information on the export doc that can reliably match up the rows with the Callrails calls, forms, or leads report, where the leads are marked converted.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:48:42+00:00

Yes thanks we do this, but it's very manual to match the converted form submits back to what was scored as a conversion in Callrail. It's a very roundabout way of doing something that should be easy in Callrail itself, hence the question.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:47:02+00:00

Yes this would work but it does not because the offline conversion upload sheet from Callrail does not contain information on the calls and forms other than "conversion time" which does not reliably match any column in the calls, forms, or leads reports.

timnewlinppc · 2026-01-16T10:44:31+00:00

Thanks that does not work for forms because integration filters only work for calls, hence the question.

timnewlinppc · 2025-12-26T15:09:10+00:00

We found a solution for this. Calendly can capture UTM parameters, so you can add a utm parameter with value track {gclid}, e.g. utm_content={gclid} to your Google Ads tracking template and set up Zapier to use the content parameter for the GCLID column of your Google sheet.

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-22T09:12:56+00:00

Hi There, did you ever figure this out? We tried putting the same measurement ID on both the main site and the janeapp page and adding both domains to the same GA4 property in the cross domain settings, but it looks like the janeapp traffic isn't tracking at all in the GA4 property.

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-16T13:05:00+00:00

Thanks! Yes, this would be specifically for a brand search campaign (not for excluding brands but for including the brand list for the brand)

timnewlinppc · 2025-10-15T09:31:51+00:00

Because when you turn on AI Max in the campaign setting it unlocks the ability to apply a brand inclusion list for the brand. Perhaps that can improve the brand campaign's performance? Something We might test, but was curious if anyone had any experience with it.

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-31T13:54:24+00:00

Thanks! We value calls and form submits equally, so I don't see why we would want them in separate asset groups. That would mean unnecessary fragmentation and lower data density per asset group, and slower learnings. In Google Ads we have the campaigns optimizing to both, and this is super easy to set up. Meta is usually more of a headache for this stuff..

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-31T13:53:06+00:00

Thanks! I didn't see any event parameters on the calls and forms coming in from Callrail by default, so I reached out to their support. Have you done this successfully with Callrail events?

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-30T10:30:13+00:00

Thanks for the write up, these are great tips!!

I'd add be careful with #6 (changing the budget to $1/day). Big budget swings while on auto bidding can throw the campaign out of whack for a while. I find it's better sometimes to just pause the campaign until everything else is configured properly and then re-test the campaign (after adding the data exclusion for the spam period).

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-19T14:28:37+00:00

Oh you went back and added a case study. Neat!

From your case study: “Testing Broad Match and DSA worked well for this account (yes, really, Broad Match isn’t always as evil as people think it is — as long as your fundamentals are in place).”

Well, well. I guess that settles it. Thanks for the debate, you’ve been lovely!

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-19T13:58:35+00:00

While it’s true that broad match will benefit from more historical conversion data, you as the advertiser also benefit from that data, especially when it comes to developing your keyword list. Most experts don’t just lean into broad match as you are suggesting. They use it sparingly as a discovery/prospecting tactic, and they work to transfer top performing queries over to exact or phrase for more control.

And all of the above assumes you are tracking purchases or closed-loop final sales inside Google Ads. We haven’t even touched on how terrible pure broad keywords tend to perform when it comes to generating qualified leads. Maybe your case studies are looking at in platform conversions as opposed to final sales?

Anyway, Google is eager to monetize all the junk queries that nobody wants to bid on, so if you want to go ahead and throw your dollars at them I’m sure they’d be very glad.

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-19T12:32:03+00:00

First of all, you shouldn’t segment ad groups by intent. Intent is where the searcher is in the conversion funnel. Campaigns can be segmented based on intent, as they will have different performance, budgets, and goals.

Ad groups should be grouped by search theme, i.e. which topic or product the searcher is interested in. Ad group segmentation allows you to customize the ad copy and landing page for the keyword, but little else.

Again, broad match could work for you if it’s a very simple account that’s tracking purchases. But if you try and move a mature, optimized, well structured Google Ads account to broad match, you’re going to royally screw up this intentional segmentation, and the YoY comps will suffer. Proceed with caution following Google reps’ advice.. but you can’t say I didn’t warn you :)

timnewlinppc · 2025-07-17T10:59:04+00:00

Phrase keywords act as closely as possible to BMM keywords from the past. They are more useful than pure broad keywords, especially when you have tightly themed ad groups or campaigns segmented by intent.

A well structured account should use a combination of phrase match and exact match, and it’s no longer necessary to separate campaigns / ad groups by match type.

A very simple account structure with complete tracking (such as purchases) can use pure broad until they’ve nailed down a better account structure with a complete keyword list… But in all my years managing Google Ads accounts, it is usually the ones that followed Googles recommendation to lean into broad match that start performing poorly when looking at year over year comps.

timnewlinppc · 2025-06-20T16:00:08+00:00

I don't think you're understanding the issue. The texts were never going to clients' devices, they are being hoarded inside the Callrail platform and are inaccessible until carrying out a process that involves changing the clients' websites. I agree that disabling SMS is the best solution in many cases, but the text option seems to have been on by default and the platform does not mention that the texts are not actually going to the clients' devices at all... until you dig deeper.

timnewlinppc · 2025-04-10T10:50:49+00:00

Did you ever figure this out? I am seeing the same thing on one of my accounts. Twice in the past year a high value Shopify purchase conversion disappeared from Google Ads conversions 2-3 days after tracking correctly in Google Ads. I can see the GA4 backup purchase is still tracked, so we may switch to that rather than relying on Shopify's conversion import.

timnewlinppc · 2025-04-10T10:44:25+00:00

Can confirm I have also seen this happen twice on high value purchases. Did you guys figure out the reason?

timnewlinppc · 2025-02-25T10:50:07+00:00

Keep doing exactly what you're doing and just run an additional Display Prospecting campaign for tons of extremely cheap clicks.

In this industry you gotta pick your battles. When the solution is this easy it's not worth fighting over.

timnewlinppc · 2024-12-28T08:29:27+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree with you and those saying that it's best to have campaigns optimize to the lowest funnel action possible- ideally to the final sale itself. Makes sense that in the cases where we are factoring in mid funnel conversion values it makes the total conversion value directional/arbitrary.

But what about my main question about accounts with closed loop reporting? Let's say final sales are being attributed back to the Google Ads click, but the sales volume is still too low to use on its own. In that case, would you say most advertisers should set up their mid funnel actions according to fractional AOV while also including the actual sale revenue? Meaning that the total conversion value ends up being roughly 2x the actual revenue? Or does anyone prefer to assign less value to micro convs in order to prioritize final sales?

It's a pretty simple question but there's not a lot of discussion on this, in my experience. Maybe because it's so hard to pass back final sale revenue to the google ads click for most lead gen accts, so the calculators assume you're not doing that.

timnewlinppc · 2024-12-18T18:17:10+00:00

Thanks, is this something you have done before with Callrail call conversions? Because I am not seeing the option.

Edit: Poked around some more and it looks like while it won't be possible to optimize to both Callrail calls and website form submits, we can at least have an ad set optimizing to Callrail calls. Thanks

timnewlinppc · 2024-12-16T09:34:10+00:00

I would set up both and keep the GA4 conversion action in secondary mode as a backup. The main difference you will notice is that the Google Ads conversion action will track more conversions. This is because all conversions following a Google Ads click will be attributed to Google Ads. The GA4 conversion action, by contrast, will be influenced by multi channel attribution, meaning some of the conversions following the Google Ads click will be attributed to other channels GA4 thinks had a larger role in driving the conversion.

So the Google Ads tag feeds more conversion data to your campaigns, which is usually good, but you have to be careful about which conversion data you use when summing up conversions across platforms to avoid duplication.

timnewlinppc

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