Most local businesses we audit are running Google Ads with text-only responsive search ads and nothing else. The call asset is empty. The location asset is empty. The phone number is sitting somewhere on the landing page, three clicks deep, where 60% of mobile searchers will never see it. And then the owner asks why their cost per call keeps creeping up.
If you run a clinic, a law firm, a salon, an HVAC business, an auto shop, a dental practice, or any business where customers convert by either calling or walking in the door, the two Google Ads assets you cannot afford to leave off are the call asset and the location asset.
They are the two highest-impact pieces of ad real estate available to local advertisers, and they are the two we configure first on every new local-business account that lands in our agency. Below we walk through what each one does, how to set them up correctly, the configuration mistakes that quietly cost local businesses leads every month, and how the two work together to dominate the local search experience.
This is a 2026 update on the broader topic we covered in our guide to Google Ads ad extensions, now refocused on the two asset types that move the needle hardest for local businesses.
Why call and location assets are the highest-leverage assets for local businesses
When a customer in your service area searches for what you offer, three things determine whether they convert: how quickly they can reach you, how easy it is to verify you are legitimate and nearby, and how much friction stands between the search result and the action. The call asset removes the first source of friction by letting people tap to dial straight from the ad. The location asset removes the second by surfacing your address, hours, photos, and Maps directions inside the ad unit itself.
Every other Google Ads asset is useful, but most of them help you sell once the customer is already engaged. Call and location assets help you capture the customer at the moment they decide. For local businesses, that moment is almost always at the top of the funnel, on a phone, with the person looking for a same-day or next-day solution. Missing that moment is the difference between getting the customer and watching them call your competitor.
We see this pattern repeatedly across our local-services portfolio. Adding properly configured call and location assets to a campaign that previously had neither typically lifts ad-attributed phone calls by 25 to 60 percent within 30 days, with no change to bid strategy or budget. The asset itself is doing the work.
How does the Google Ads call asset work?
The call asset replaces the standard “click and visit a website” behavior with a “tap to call” behavior. On mobile, it shows up as a clickable phone button beneath your ad. On desktop, it appears as a “Call” link that opens a popup with your phone number, often the Google forwarding number rather than your real one.
That forwarding number is the second important piece. When you turn call tracking on for the call asset, Google substitutes a unique tracking number for your real phone number. Calls placed to that number ring through to your real line, and Google logs the call duration, time of day, and source campaign as a conversion called “Calls from Ads.” That conversion can then be used as a primary conversion goal and fed into smart bidding, so your bidding strategy actually optimizes for the customer behavior that produces revenue.
There are a few configuration details that make the difference between a working call asset and a broken one.
You cannot type your phone number into the responsive search ad text. Google will disapprove the ad. The phone number lives on the call asset, never inside the ad copy itself. We see this mistake on roughly half the new accounts we audit, with disapproved ads stuck in pending review while the business owner wonders why their search impressions dropped.
The old call-only ads have been deprecated. If you still have call-only ads running, Google is in the process of phasing them out. The replacement is a responsive search ad paired with a call asset and smart bidding, which Google can dynamically format to look like a call ad when it predicts a call is the most valuable action.
Asset scheduling is your defense against off-hours wasted spend. If your business answers calls only between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., you can schedule the call asset to only show during those hours. Otherwise you are paying for clicks at 11 p.m. that go to voicemail and never convert. Almost no local-business account we audit has this configured, and the wasted spend is usually 8 to 15 percent of total budget.
You should also set up website call tracking alongside the ad call tracking. The “Calls from Ads” conversion only captures calls placed directly from the ad. Customers who tap your ad, browse your site, and then call from the website are not counted unless you have separate call tracking on the site. We use CallTrackingMetrics for this layer in most of our accounts, and we have a walkthrough on configuring CallTrackingMetrics with Google Ads that covers the setup.
Calls from ads do tend to be slightly lower-quality than calls from the website, in our experience. The reason is that the customer has not done the website-level qualification of confirming you offer what they need before they dialed. For some businesses this is a feature, not a bug. Emergency services, urgent dental, plumbing, locksmithing, and any service where the customer needs help in the next two hours benefit from the lowest-friction path to a phone call. For more considered purchases, like a long elective procedure or a major remodel, the lower lead quality is real, and we sometimes deprioritize the call asset in favor of routing the customer through a more thorough landing page.
If your call asset is set up but your phone is not ringing the way it should, the configuration is usually the bottleneck.
How does the Google Ads location asset work?
The location asset surfaces your physical business inside the ad: address, hours, distance from the searcher, links to Maps directions, and often a tap-to-call button even if you have no call asset configured separately. To use it, you connect your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account. Once connected, Google pulls the GBP data into the ad unit dynamically.
Location assets are compatible with search, display, video, and Performance Max campaigns. They serve on Google Search, search partners, the display network, Google Maps, and YouTube. The single most useful behavior of the location asset for local businesses is buried in that list: even when you have search partners and display turned off in a search campaign, location assets can still serve your ad on Google Maps. That means a customer searching directly inside the Maps app, which is the most high-intent local-search surface on the platform, can see your ad even when your campaign is otherwise locked down to Google Search only.
If you sell your products through retail or affiliate locations, the same asset type now handles those too. The old separate “affiliate location extensions” are folded into location assets. A specialty coffee brand whose product is carried at Whole Foods can use location assets to surface the nearest Whole Foods carrying the brand, instead of trying to send users to the brand’s own e-commerce site.
Location assets are managed at the account level by default, but can be customized at the campaign or ad-group level if you have multiple locations and want different campaigns to feature different ones. For multi-location businesses, this is essential. We have set up clinic groups where the Newport Beach campaign features the Newport Beach office assets and the Irvine campaign features the Irvine ones, with the radius targeting and ad copy tailored to each. The location asset is what ties the geography of the ad to the geography of the customer.
There is also an account-level automated asset for dynamic location assets, which Google enables by default. If your real location assets are configured the way you want them, turn the automated version off, otherwise you can end up with mismatched information serving alongside the assets you carefully built. The 10-minute cleanup of account-level automated assets is something we run on every new client account, because Google’s defaults are designed to maximize Google’s data, not to maximize your local conversion rate.
How call and location assets work together
The two assets are designed to be deployed together, and the moment a customer sees both inside the same ad unit is the moment your local Google Ads campaign starts working at full strength.
Picture the actual ad unit on a mobile search result. The headlines and descriptions establish what you sell. The location asset shows the customer that you are 1.2 miles from where they are standing, that you are open until 7 p.m., that you have a 4.8-star rating from 312 reviews. The call asset gives them a button that places the call directly. The customer taps once, the phone rings, the booking happens. That whole sequence takes under five seconds. Without either asset, the customer either has to load your website and hunt for a phone number, or tap to a Maps result that does not directly route revenue back to your Google Ads campaign for attribution.
We have documented exactly this pattern across our dental marketing portfolio. The lift in patient inquiries we generated for the practice we wrote up in our Sage Dental implant case study was driven by the same configuration: call asset with proper Google forwarding tracking, location asset connected to the practice’s GBP, asset scheduling set to office hours, and smart bidding set to optimize for “Calls from Ads” as a primary conversion. The same playbook produced the results we documented for an Orange County dental clinic in our 21 new patient appointments case study.
What we have seen with our clients
The accounts we have inherited from previous agencies fall into a predictable pattern. Either the call asset is configured but call tracking is off, so the conversion data is missing entirely. Or the location asset is connected but the GBP itself has the wrong hours, the wrong service area, or duplicate listings, so the ad surfaces inaccurate information that hurts trust. Or the assets are configured at the account level but never customized at the campaign level for multi-location businesses, so a customer in Newport Beach sees the Irvine office’s address and either drives to the wrong location or just bounces.
The fix in every case is the same: an audit of how the assets are configured, a sweep through the GBP to verify the underlying data is accurate, an asset-scheduling review to make sure ads only show when calls can be answered, and a check that smart bidding is optimizing for the right conversion action. All of it directly determines whether a local business turns paid clicks into actual revenue.
For a local-services client we onboarded last quarter, the cost per ad-attributed phone call dropped 41 percent in the first 30 days after we deployed properly configured call and location assets, with no other changes to the account. The lift came almost entirely from the asset scheduling, from connecting the GBP to surface the address and ratings inside the ad unit. The campaigns were not changed. The bid strategy was not changed. Two assets, configured correctly, did the work.
Most local accounts have the right assets but the wrong configuration. The audit usually pays for itself inside the first month.
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Setup checklist for call and location assets
When we onboard a local-business account, the order of operations is the same every time:
First, verify the Google Business Profile is accurate, complete, and matches the business legal name and address on file. Hours, photos, primary category, and service area all need to be current before you connect the profile to Google Ads, because the ad unit will surface whatever the profile says.
Second, connect the Google Business Profile to Google Ads inside the Tools and Settings menu, then set up the location asset at the account level. For multi-location businesses, customize at the campaign level so each campaign features the right office.
Third, create the call asset and integrate in third party call tracking. Make sure some sort of “Calls from Ads” goal conversion action is set as a primary action under the campaign or account-level goals.
Fourth, configure asset scheduling on the call asset to match your actual answering hours. If your front desk is closed weekends, the call asset should be off on weekends. If you have an after-hours answering service or your 20-30% of your clients prefer to leave voicemails and don’t expect calls to be picked up off-hours, the schedule can be wider.
Fifth, test the campaign bid strategy to a smart-bidding option that optimizes toward the conversion goals you just set as primary. Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value with a target CPA or ROAS works for most local accounts. Test it against Manual CPC to see which is doing better. Depending on your account ad spend, you’ll need enough daily budget and enough conversions to be able to utilize Maximize Conversions / Maximize Conversion values though. An account with $20/day in ad spend is not going to have enough to test different campaign bidding strategies.
Sixth, layer in third-party call tracking on the website to capture calls placed from the landing page rather than directly from the ad. Without this, you only see half the call data your campaigns are generating.
Seventh, turn off the account-level automated assets that overlap with the assets you just configured, specifically dynamic call assets and dynamic location assets. Google enables these by default. They are not harmful in every case, but they routinely surface mismatched information, especially when you have multi-location businesses or any nuance in how you want your business represented.
Once those seven steps are complete, the campaign is in a position to actually use call and location assets the way they were designed.
Frequently asked questions
Should every local business use both call and location assets?
In our experience, yes. Any business where customers convert by phone, by walk-in, or both should be running both assets in every Google Ads campaign. The only exception is a service business that explicitly does not take phone calls and prefers form submissions only, which is rare for local services. For everyone else, the two assets are not optional, they are the foundation of a working local Google Ads campaign.
Will call assets work without call tracking turned on?
The asset will technically display, but you will lose almost all of the value. Without call tracking, Google cannot attribute calls back to specific campaigns, ad groups, or keywords, which means smart bidding has no signal to optimize against and you have no data to make decisions with. We treat call tracking as non-negotiable on the call asset. If a client has privacy or compliance concerns about Google forwarding numbers, we work through those constraints, but we never run the call asset without the tracking layer.
Can I run a location asset if I am a service-area business with no physical office?
If your business serves customers at their location and does not invite the public into a physical address, your Google Business Profile should be configured as a service-area business, which hides the street address. The location asset can still connect to that profile, and the ad unit will surface the service area, hours, and reviews even though the address itself is hidden. We use this configuration for plumbers, mobile dog groomers, and other service-area clients.
How do call and location assets affect Performance Max campaigns?
Both assets are compatible with Performance Max and we use them in our PMax setups for local businesses. The location asset in particular is high-leverage in PMax because it unlocks placement on Google Maps, which Performance Max otherwise reaches inconsistently. The call asset feeds the “Calls from Ads” conversion into PMax’s bidding signal alongside form fills, online purchases, and any other conversions you have configured. We covered the broader optimization framework in our guide to Performance Max campaign optimization.
What is the difference between call assets and call-only ads?
Call-only ads were a separate ad format where the entire ad was built around a click-to-call action with no website link. Google has deprecated call-only ads. The replacement is a responsive search ad paired with a call asset, which Google can dynamically format to behave like a call-only ad when the algorithm predicts a phone call is the highest-value outcome for the searcher. From a setup perspective, you build a normal RSA, attach a call asset, turn call tracking on, and let smart bidding handle the rest.
How do I know if my call and location assets are actually working?
Pull the asset report inside Google Ads, segment by asset type, and look at impressions, clicks, and conversions for each individual asset. A healthy call asset will show meaningful impressions and a positive conversion rate, with the “Calls from Ads” conversion firing regularly. A healthy location asset will show impressions and click-through actions like “Get directions” and “Tap-to-call from location asset.” If either asset is stuck at zero impressions, the configuration is broken, usually because the asset is not approved, the schedule is set wrong, or the GBP is not connected.
Where to go from here
Most local-business owners assume their Google Ads campaigns are operating at full strength because the campaigns are running and the budget is spending. The reality is that if the call and location assets are missing, misconfigured, or running on autopilot through Google’s account-level defaults, the campaigns are almost certainly leaving 25 to 60 percent of available phone-call conversions on the table every month.
This is the single highest-leverage fix we deploy on local-business accounts, and it is one of the foundational steps in our broader Google Ads management service. If your campaigns have been running without an asset audit for more than 90 days, that is almost always where the next batch of leads is hiding.
Tell us about your campaigns and we will show you exactly which assets are misconfigured and what fixing them is worth.
