Dynamic number insertion.In plain English.

It lets you see which channel made the phone ring without changing your main number on listings.

A small script on your site finds the phone number on each page and swaps it for a tracking number matched to where the visitor came from. Google Ads has its own version: Google forwarding numbers replace your number on your site for people who clicked an ad, and route the calls to your real phone.

Google's Business Profile guidelines ask for a number that connects to that location and is under the business's direct control, and they ban numbers that redirect people to other businesses' lines. Your own local number meets that bar. To show a different number in your Google Ads location ads, Business Profile has a separate Google Ads phone number setting.

We recommend keeping the main number in your page code and on every directory, and letting the script do the swapping, so your details stay consistent everywhere. Google's forwarding numbers only work inside Google Ads call reporting, so never print one or list it on a directory.

Example: a visitor from a Google ad sees one number and a visitor from a Yelp link sees another. Both ring the same front desk, and the report shows which source brought each call.