Today we conclude our week-long look at a few new features Google has begun to roll out over the past few weeks, and how you can use them to enhance your search engine marketing. Previously we looked at Google Instant Preview and Google Places Tags. Today we will look at a new feature available as an extension within a Google AdWords campaign (Google’s pay-per-click platform):

Google AdWords Call Metrics

Presently, the Google AdWords interface allows you to see which keywords and ads are attracting traffic to your site and generating the most leads. This information is important not only to see that your marketing dollars are being spent effectively, but also to monitor which ad groups in your campaign you should devote more of your budget to, or improve. The one thing AdWords does not measure, however, is how many phone calls you receive as a result of seeing or clicking on a paid search ad.

The performance of your AdWords campaign can increase significantly once calls are measured. Companies like Mongoose Metrics provide a great call measurement service to more accurately report your paid search ROI, but the monthly service can be costly to a business with a limited marketing budget. As an alternative, Google is starting to beta test its own call metrics within AdWords.

Utilizing their Google Voice software, call metrics assigns your campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into well performing ads on both desktop and high-end mobile devices. Using that number (which redirects to your business’ phone number), AdWords is able to track when the number is called, clicked on when the ad appears on a mobile device, and the duration of the phone call. You can then use this information to get a better idea of where your leads are coming from, and adjust the campaign accordingly.

Google’s call metrics is currently only available to select AdWords campaigns, but should be available everywhere soon. Check out the video below to learn more how call metrics works: