Call Tracking: The Risks & Advice from Professor Maps

Filed in Local Search by Matt McGee on May 14, 2013 • 0 Comments

telephone Call tracking is a topic that comes up at every Local U workshop that we put on and, in most cases, it’s because call tracking has caused all kinds of problems for the local business that’s doing it.

Professor Maps, AKA Mike Blumenthal, has written an easy-to-understand overview of the risks involved in call tracking, along with his advice for when and where it might be okay to do it and not hurt your local search visibility. He covers the use of call tracking phone numbers in four areas:

offline (“you would be better off tracking incoming calls manually”)
Google+ Local (“a no brainer in not being good for a call tracking number”)
the local ecosystem (“where implementing call tracking can cause the biggest problems with Google”)
your website (“if not done properly it can cause immeasurable harm to your Google local results”>

That’s just a sample of the advice. Best to go read the full article:

A Guide to Call Tracking and Local Search

And be sure to read through the comments, too, for more advice and discussion on a very important local search topic.

Postscript: Going through feeds and Twitter streams, I just found this highly-related and also worthwhile article from another fellow Local U faculty member. Will Scott writes, Why Call Tracking Numbers in Local SEO Make Me Angry.

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)