The invisible Google Ads problem: zero-second calls

There is an invisible problem that could be draining your ad budget or causing you to miss sales.

If you use a call tracking platform for call assets or landing page numbers, you might be at risk.

The problem is zero-second calls.

What is a zero-second call?

A zero-second call happens when someone dials your number but the call never connects to you.

Your call tracking platform receives the call, but your phone never rings. From your point of view the call never happened.

There are several reasons for this:

• The caller might hang up while the call is being routed.
• The connection between the tracking platform and your phone system might fail.
• Some other technical glitch.

Whatever the cause, the result is the same. You paid for the click, but you never got the chance to turn that lead into a sale.

You can usually find these calls buried in your call tracking logs. But by the time you discover them it is already too late. The chances of that lead finding someone else to help them go up with every minute that passes.

I've seen this across several major systems including Twilio, CallRail, Aircall, WhatConverts and CloudTalk.

How the zero-second call alert works

Most call tracking platforms can send a webhook (a system-to-system message) at the end of a call.

I've been receiving these messages as part of the lead tracking systems I've built. A few years ago I started sending an email after every call so my clients would be comfortable that Google Ads was generating leads.

I'm now improving this system so it sends an SMS alert whenever a zero-second call occurs. That way the business knows immediately that a lead tried to call but never connected.

When we receive the webhook we check the call duration. If it was zero (some systems send 1 second) we trigger an SMS alert along with the regular call-received email.

The goal is speed-to-lead. The faster the business knows that someone called, the faster they can call that person back. That one small change can turn a lost lead into a sale.

Zero-second calls distort your data

There is another problem with these calls.

Many advertisers count every phone call as a conversion in Google Ads.

Some of these calls are spam or wrong numbers. If these are counted as conversions, Google's bidding algorithm learns from the wrong signals. That makes it harder for the system to optimise for real customers.

One way to reduce this problem is to require a minimum call duration before a call counts as a conversion. I don't like this approach, but it's better than nothing.

It can help prevent spam and accidental calls from polluting your conversion data.

But it doesn't solve the more important problem. If the call never connected, you still lost the chance to speak to that lead.

And if you don't know about the missed calls immediately, your chances of winning the customer drop.

I've explained the problem with call duration conversions in more detail here if you're interested: https://pete-bowen.com/the-problem-with-call-duration-conversions

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