Local Search and Custom Phone Call Tracking Numbers

[ronniethedodger]

I just stumbled upon this today, and not sure what to do about it. A Company close to me had bought into an advertisement package with DEX Online of which they offered phone call tracking. This tracking involves the use of a special phone number which is monitored by Telmetrics (3rd party) to track phone calls made to the Company.

My question has nothing to do with the ROI, in fact, from what I gather the amount of leads generated from this special phone number is not worth the money dumped into it.

The real question is how does this affect Local Search when the real phone number and the tracking number does not jive with each other?

One oddity I picked up on was the lack of reviews on Google Places, and that lack had to do with the reviews on sites where the tracking number had propagated to (CityPages, YellowPages, etc.). Those reviews do not appear Google Places.

Am I being paranoid? Or is this okay? What if you cancel the advertisement, and people who used the old phone number wrote it down? And what happens to the other sites that have the wrong number if you cancel?

[timmathews.com]

Ronnie,
I too, have put quite a bit of thought into this. It seems there is no sure fire, SAFE way to advertise with this and not be sure to lose some business in the future if you decide to stop using the services.
There is no way they will still port the calls to you after you stop advertising with them. It seems that once you go in, you have to stay in for fear of losing business.
As for the google places, etc., you could create a new listing for each phone number. This, in turn, could benefit your seo efforts. In the same breath, it could hurt you if google want to penalize you for multiple listings.
It seems like it is a big catch 22. You are able to get some good tracking results, but once you stop using the service, you could surely lose some potential customers.

[ronniethedodger]

How about two numbers for one business? You triggered something in my thought process for some reason. I have not gone into Google Places, or Yahoo!Local for that matter, to check and see if you can "provide" alternate phone numbers. This would be similar to a FAX number, but not quite.

They may like to discover the numbers on their own. Maybe a discreet publication of DEX's tracking phone number on the website in question may tie them together? I am just thinking out loud here. If they can pick up on that and put 2 and 2 together.

BTW, Tim. Are you any relation to Dave?

[rockafalla]

Reach Local, a large Adwords management company (I am sure you have come across them at some point) offer multiple VoIP numbers to track your marketing avenues, but the one big flaw I see with their approach is that if you use a separate number for your marketing initiatives (especially offline), it can work well if the customer calls that number after seeing your advert, but often, people will see an offline advertisement and then visit your website for further information - if the telephone number shown on your website does not match that shown in the other sources, then you will never know how many calls derived from your advertising. Reach claim that they can change the numbers dynamically, but this is only true if the customer visits their reverse proxy framed copy of your site. If the customer actually visits your "real" website, they will only ever see your original telephone number - Big flaw as far as I am concerned.

There is a start-up company in Australia called Closing the Loop who are doing some very clever things in this field. From what I understand, They will provide you with as many telephone numbers as you would like to track your marketing, both off and online.

Their big difference is that they provide VoIP numbers that are routed through an exchange to your main business number. If your marketing is of an online nature (even down to organic searches that drove traffic to your site) they will, with the addition of a simple script to your site, dynamically change the number displayed on your site to the respective VoIP number. If the visitor to your site arrives directly then the script will display your "normal number". They provide you with access to an online reporting centre, as well as sending the information to your Google Analytics account in order that you can create goals to track your ROI and use these with all the other GA metrics. If you are interested their website address is phonecallconversiontracking.com.au, and whilst they are in their infancy, I am positive that this method of tracking telephone conversions is sure to fly.

Obviously if you drop the use of any of those telephone numbers you will need to change your material that displays your number, there is no way around that, but on the upside, there are very few channels which your number would be displayed continuously without the ability to change it.

As far as I am aware, this technology is only available in Australia at present, but as the popularity for the service increases I am certain the rest of the world will be close behind

[ronniethedodger]

@rockafella - No disrespect, but we are not interested in tracking what calls came from where. Adding more numbers will just compound the problem that I think may be at issue here. And I still do not like this type of tracking anyway. Just too many numbers, and what is the prospective client going to put into their Android? Then what happens if you cancel the contract?

My fear as I previously stated is that the multiple numbers may be affecting Local searches in some fashion. It is not a matter of money for using the Dex phone number, that is a drop in the bucket for what they pitch out every year in advertising. But the bigger cost here (for the sake of tracking) may be lost searches, and from what I can see, lost client reviews from the sites that have that tracking number posted. The latter I am almost sure of, but still looking into.

Another thing is that the Dex advertising is not converting all that well. In the grand scheme of things, it pretty much sucks. Here we have a tracking number that is tracking what? Basically drops of water from a thunderstorm. Here you go, the advertising has already paid for itself (not really, it is costing).

Tracking is done the old fashioned way. When the call comes in, it is simple. How did you hear from us? That gets recorded in the database, and it is there for history sake. No muss, no fuss.

But I am only here temporarily. Just a place to be while I am on my way to Australia, of which, I will get there someday!

[timmathews.com]

BTW, Tim. Are you any relation to Dave?

Ronnie,
Yes, Dave Mathews is my cousin. Although he should not be mistaken with Dave MaTThews as in "The Dave Matthews Band". I do have a cousin named David and it is quite a conversation starter in some cases when I introduce myself.

As for the multiple phone numbers per listing, that seems like a decent idea. Did you move forward with it?

[ronniethedodger]

As for the multiple phone numbers per listing, that seems like a decent idea. Did you move forward with it?

No, not too far. I just had this thrown into my lap. Trying to get into Telmetrics (via Dex) without the correct credentials. I have other things a little more pressing right now, but will eventually get there.