Your phone number on your website: how do you stop a flood of nuisance calls?

You put your phone number on your website so customers can call you — not so that call centres, spam merchants, and fake Google reps can ruin your entire day. So what can you do about it?

Sound familiar? You add your phone number to the contact page, and a few weeks later the phone rings more often about "a great energy deal" or "your Google listing" than it does for actual customers. Annoying — and a real time-drain. But removing the number entirely isn't an option either: people want to be able to call, and Google rewards a visible phone number for local businesses.

Luckily, there's a lot of ground between "number fully exposed on the site" and "completely unreachable." Below is a practical approach you can put in place in an afternoon.

Why are those unwanted calls coming in?

Roughly three sources:

• Scrapers: bots that trawl the entire internet collecting phone numbers. Those lists are sold to call centres.
• Companies House records: your business number often appears in publicly available company data. There's not much you can do about that, except register with the Do Not Call Register (yes, it works for businesses too, since 2021).
• Forms and quote requests: every time you enter your number somewhere online, you end up in yet another system.

You can tackle the first source yourself. The second and third, partly. Together, that often cuts unwanted call traffic by 60–80%.

Step 1: display your number on the site without making it easy for bots

Most scrapers look for text that resembles a phone number: +31, 035-, or a string of ten digits. A few simple tweaks keep your number perfectly readable for people, but harder for dumb bots:

• Use a clickable link (<a href="tel:+31355432100">) so mobile calling works, but display the visible text slightly differently — for example, with a non-breaking space or dots.
• Don't put your number in the footer on every page. One contact page is enough. That saves scrapers thousands of hits.
• Consider using an image for the number in less critical spots (such as the header). Not ideal for accessibility, so only do this alongside a readable alternative.

Clever bots will get through this, but 80% of scrapers aren't clever.

Step 2: use a separate number for your website

This is the single most effective measure. Get a second number — most VoIP providers charge just a few euros a month — and use it exclusively on your website and in online forms. Keep your "real" main number just for existing customers and suppliers.

Benefits:

• If the website number starts filling up with spam, you know immediately where it's coming from.
• During busy periods you can forward that number to voicemail without missing genuine customers.
• If the spam gets out of hand, you can cancel and replace the number without any hassle.

Step 3: use caller ID recognition and filters smartly

Almost every modern phone and business phone system has some form of spam detection. With business VoIP solutions you can often:

• Automatically send anonymous numbers to voicemail.
• Block international numbers if you only operate in the Netherlands.
• Import a list of known spam numbers.

Ask your telephony provider what's available. There's often more included in your package than you'd expect.

Step 4: register with the Do Not Call Register — even as a business

Since 1 July 2021, sole traders and small businesses have also been able to register with the Do Not Call Register to opt out of unsolicited commercial calls. Do it. It's free, takes five minutes, and companies that ignore it risk a fine from the ACM.

Important: the register protects you against Dutch call centres that play by the rules. It won't help with scam calls from abroad — which is exactly why steps 1 and 2 remain important.

Step 5: give your colleagues a quick script

Some spam will always slip through. Make sure everyone in the office knows how to wrap up the call quickly and politely:

• "We don't do business through unsolicited phone calls. Have a good day." — then hang up.
• No "no, we already have…" — that just invites a counter-pitch.
• Never transfer to "someone who handles that" — it only makes the problem worse.

A small note next to the phone with these lines helps new staff and interns more than you'd think.

Bonus: check your online visibility

While you're reviewing your contact details, it's a good moment to check whether your website is actually easy to find by the right people. Is your business information consistent across all pages? Is there an old number lurking somewhere? Does the click-to-call link work on mobile?

Go through it yourself, or have it included in our SEO check. That way you'll know in one go whether everything is as it should be — and whether Google finds you before the scrapers do.

Not sure whether your current website settings are up to scratch? Take a look at our website structure check. It often delivers more in an hour than an afternoon of searching on your own.