Worked example, not a client
An emergency locksmith's first week on a Search campaign after call-only ads ended, day by day
A one-van locksmith in a market town had run call-only ads for four years and lost them in February 2026. This is the first week of the replacement, a Search campaign with call assets landing on a page built for a thumb, written as the daily log we keep for a phone-led account. The locksmith is a composite; the figures are illustrative.
Written by Daniel Stoychev. The locksmith is a composite and the daily figures are illustrative. The setup is the one in the call-only guide linked below, and the daily log is the format we keep on every phone-led account.
Worked example. The business and its week are invented to show the first seven days in order. The settings, the schedule rules and the three kinds of call are real and apply to every phone-led account.
The week, day by day
What was changed and what the phone did
| Day | What we changed | What the phone did | What we learned |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Campaign live: phrase and exact keywords, call asset, schedule 7am to 10pm, page with the number first | 9 calls, 4 over a minute | Two calls at 10:40pm: the asset's own schedule was still on default |
| 2 | Call asset schedule matched to the campaign; website call action set to 60 seconds | 7 calls, 5 over a minute | The short calls were price checks that rang off |
| 3 | Search terms: car keys, safes, key cutting added as negatives | 8 calls, 6 over a minute | A third of day one's clicks had been car key searches |
| 4 | Nothing. The day the report was read, not the account | 6 calls, 5 over a minute | Counted conversions showed 3; all conversions showed 14 |
| 5 | Desktop bid lowered by 40%, not excluded | 9 calls, 7 over a minute | Two of the long calls came from desktop searches made at work |
| 6 | Saturday: schedule kept, budget unchanged | 11 calls, 8 over a minute | The busiest day; the owner answered all of them |
| 7 | Sunday: the first weekly search terms read, 22 negatives added | 5 calls, 4 over a minute | The week closed at 55 calls, 39 over a minute, 3 counted conversions |
The gap in the report
Why 39 calls showed as 3 conversions
Thirty-six of the thirty-nine long calls came from the ad's own call button, which Google reports as clicks to call and does not count in the Conversions column however the goal is set. Three came through the website's tracked number after someone read the page first, and those three were the counted conversions. The report to the owner carried both numbers with a sentence between them, and the bidding strategy stayed on Maximize Clicks, because a strategy that learns from three conversions a week learns the wrong thing.
The page's first screen, as built
Six things in six hundred pixels
- The number, as a tap-to-call link, in the first line, with the words open now beside it during the schedule.
- The area covered, in one line, because a locksmith forty miles away is a wasted call for both sides.
- One line of proof: years trading, a review count, the accreditation.
- A three-field form for the person who cannot ring: name, number, what is wrong.
- The hours, exactly as the campaign schedule.
- A consent banner that overlays the bottom of the screen and never covers the number.
What the second week measured
The reading that decides the next change
Week two is read against week one on three lines: long calls per pound, the share of calls inside the schedule, and the counted conversions, which stay small by design. If the long calls hold and the search terms report is cleaner, the campaign earns a budget rise of a third; if the short calls rise, the page's first screen is the suspect, not the keywords. The call-tracking guide explains the tracked number and the sixty-second rule in detail.
Where this leads
The pages that do this work
Tell us what you spend. We reply with a fixed fee and the first three changes.
Your monthly spend, what a lead is worth to you and the address of the page your ads land on. Daniel Stoychev replies within one working day with the tier, the fee, what he would change first, and whether your sector and area are still free.