# How do you know a booking came from your Google ad? > Booking by booking, mostly you cannot. What Google, Fresha and Square will actually show you, and the four numbers worth writing down each month. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/blog/how-do-you-know-a-booking-came-from-your-google-ad/ Author: The Salon Ads Studio Published: 2026-10-02 --- Booking by booking, mostly you cannot, and anybody who tells you they can for a salon your size is guessing. What you can do is count the things that leave a trail: calls from the ad, enquiries, and taps through to your booking page. Then put those next to the number of new clients who actually sat in your chair that month. That is not the same as knowing which client came from which search. It is enough to tell you whether the money is working, and it is what every honest setup does. Here is where the trail is, and where it stops. ## Where the trail breaks between the ad and the chair Think about the ways somebody gets from your ad into your chair. She taps the call button on the ad. That one can be counted. She taps through to your page, then taps Book. The visit can be counted, and so can the tap on Book. What happens once she lands in your booking system depends entirely on that system. She sees the ad, taps nothing, and rings you on Thursday from the number on your Google listing. Or walks past on Saturday and comes in. Or searches your salon's name a week later. None of those carries a label saying the ad started it. ![Four routes from a salon's Google ad to a booking, showing which ones leave a number and which are never counted](/images/blog/how-to-tell-if-a-booking-came-from-your-google-ad-trail.svg "The routes that stay inside the ad account are the short ones, and the walk-in at the bottom is why nobody gets a booking-by-booking answer.") Most of the arguing about whether ads work happens in that last group, because it is real and it cannot be measured. It is also why I would never hand you a booking-by-booking number. Nobody has one. ## What each system will actually show you This part is worth reading off the platforms themselves, because they are clearer about their own limits than most of the people selling ads on top of them. **Google Ads, for calls.** With call reporting switched on, Google puts its own forwarding number on your ad. Google says that lets you see how long the call lasted, when it started and whether it connected. You can then tell it to count only calls over a length you choose, so a wrong number that rings off after five seconds does not flatter the month. Calls are the most countable thing a salon ad produces. **Your Google listing.** The Performance page on your Business Profile shows calls, website clicks, directions and, if your bookings run through a booking provider, bookings. The catch is in Google's own wording: the figures include actions from both organic search results and Google Ads. So the calls on your listing are the free ones and the paid ones in a single number. It is a good number for watching your listing. It cannot tell you what the ads did. **Fresha.** You can connect Fresha to Google Analytics, and Fresha says it will then send traffic sources, profile views and bookings across. Then the limit, in Fresha's own help centre: bookings made in the Fresha marketplace apps on iPhone and Android cannot be tracked in Google Analytics, and tracking only works for bookings made on Fresha's website. If you use Reserve with Google, Fresha also lets you filter the Channel column in your Appointments tab for Google. That tells you the booking came through Google's booking route. Fresha's page does not say it can tell you whether she tapped an ad or your free listing first. **Square Appointments.** A hair salon put the problem plainly in Square's own community forum in 2025. Without a way to add tracking to the booking, or send people on to a confirmation page of their own, they said they could only guess which ad was working. Another business owner replying in April 2026 said the only way they had found was to put their own booking page in front of it. So each system can see its own piece of the walk from search to chair. None of them sees the whole of it, and none of them claims to. ![A lit salon window on a wet evening as a woman walks past, someone a Google ad may reach with no booking to show](/images/blog/how-to-tell-if-a-booking-came-from-your-google-ad-hero-03.jpg) ## Why one client is the wrong thing to judge by Even if every system tracked perfectly, asking which single booking came from the ad would still mislead you. Say a woman sees your ad for balayage on Monday, does not tap it, and searches your salon's name on Friday. The ad did the work and your free listing gets the credit. Now turn it round. A regular who cannot find your number in a hurry taps your ad to ring you for her usual trim. The ad gets the credit for a client who was already yours. Both happen every week, and they pull in opposite directions. Over a month they mostly wash out. Over one client they tell you nothing. So judge the month, not the client. ## What to count instead, every month Four numbers, written down on the same day every month, next to what you spent: 1. Calls from the ad that lasted long enough to be real. 2. Enquiries: forms, messages, anything that was not a call. 3. Taps through to your booking page. 4. New clients who sat in your chair that month, out of your own booking system. The first three come from the ad account. The fourth is yours, and it is the one that pays the rent. If the spend holds steady and the first three climb, the fourth should follow within a few weeks. If it does not, the leak is between the enquiry and the booking, and it is usually either [the phone nobody can answer](/blog/the-bookings-you-lose-when-nobody-can-answer-the-phone) or [the page people land on](/blog/your-salon-ads-get-clicks-but-nobody-rings). For scale, here is one month at one hair salon on £300 of ads: 38 calls and 21 enquiries, which came out at £14 an enquiry. One salon, one month, not a promise. What matters is the shape of that report. Those are counted contacts, not claimed clients, and nobody pretended to know which of them turned into a colour booking. Put your own month next to [what a new client should actually cost you](/blog/what-a-new-client-should-actually-cost-you) and you have the only judgement that matters. ![A hairdresser noting on a record card whether a new client's booking came from a Google ad, beside a comb and tea](/images/blog/how-to-tell-if-a-booking-came-from-your-google-ad-hero-05.jpg) ## Ask her, and write it down The cheapest tracking there is: ask every new client how she found you, on the phone or once she is in the chair, and put the answer in her notes. Then ask one more thing. Did she search for you by name, or for something like balayage near me? People misremember, and "Google" can mean the ad, the listing or the map. But somebody who searched for the work and found you is exactly the person ads exist to reach, and somebody who searched your name already knew you. Over a month that gives you a rough tally to sit beside the four numbers. Rough is fine. It is real, and it is yours. ![A colourist's gloved hands painting balayage over a foil, the kind of colour booking a Google ad is meant to bring in](/images/blog/how-to-tell-if-a-booking-came-from-your-google-ad-hero-07.jpg) ## What we do, and where we stop We count calls, form enquiries and booking click-outs, and we say so. Four numbers and one email a month. We do not tell you which client came from which search, because Fresha and Treatwell do not share booking data with us, and nobody running your ads gets it either. Your Google listing gets fixed before you pay anything, there is no commission on bookings ever, and it costs £15 to £149 a month depending on your ad spend band. If whoever runs your ads sends you a report full of bookings they say came from Google, ask them one thing: where did that number come from? If it is your booking system's own channel filter, fine, and now you know what that filter can and cannot see. If the answer is vague, so is the number. Every Google, Fresha and Square detail above was read off their own help pages and community forum on 2 October 2026. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can I see who rang me from the ad? Often, yes. Google says call reporting shows the caller's number for calls over 15 seconds, and caller ID still works on calls routed through its forwarding number, so the number comes up on your phone as normal. That lets you match a call to a name in your diary by hand, if you want to. ### Do I pay if someone copies the number off the ad and dials it? No. Google says it does not charge for people who dial a forwarding number by hand. You are charged when somebody taps the number on the ad, at the same price as a click through to your page. ### Can I put the number from my ad on my flyers too? No. The forwarding number belongs to Google, which says it can change or be reassigned, and that it cannot be used outside Google's own call tracking. Keep your own number on your window, your cards and your listing, and let the ad carry Google's. ### Why can I not see any numbers on my Google listing? Google only shows performance figures for a verified Business Profile, and only when you are signed in with the Google account the profile belongs to. If you are verified and signed in and still see a gap, some figures only appear where they apply to your kind of business. ### Does my listing show what people searched to find me? It shows the search terms that led people to your profile, under Searches on the Performance page. Google updates that list at the start of each month, and says it can take up to five days to appear. It is worth a look, because it tells you whether people find you by name or by service.