With its ability to put your business in front of local consumers actively searching for your products or services, as well as listing your business directly on Google Maps, the value of your Google Business Profile is clear to see.
With increased local visibility more visitors and more sales, a GBP increases your revenue and boosts profits. However, when we often focus on the financial benefits of having a Google Business Profile, there are other ways that it can help you reach your business goals.
One of the key factors in this is the metrics and analytics that are all possible through the Google Business Profile dashboard. Providing valuable data and insight, you can find out detailed information about a range of underlying business factors.
Here is a breakdown of the best performance metrics Google Business Profile has to offer.
New Google Business Profile Performance Metrics
Before we learn how to make use of these metrics, it is important to understand exactly what tools are available for your business.
Interactions
This group of metrics looks at how visitors interact with your business, website and Google Business Profile.
Overview
This metric shows you the total number of interactions that have been generated by your Google Business Profile. This includes the number of clicks to your website, the number of bookings, messages, calls and so on that you have received from visitors to your Google Business Profile. While this gives a good indicator of how your performance is going, it can be deceiving. For instance, a growing number of clicks to your website is good news, but if you are getting lower levels of messages that might indicate a problem. On the overall metric though, you may see the graph continuing to go up.
This is why it is so important to drill down into the individual metrics for each interaction to get a clear picture of what is working and what is not.
Calls
Calls show you the number of times users have clicked on the call button that is on your Google Business Profile. It is important to know that clicking the button doesn’t necessarily make a call, and the use of this feature is focused more on mobile users.
Bookings
This is a really useful metric that shows you how many people have actually booked through your business profile. Crucially this is a metric that is only collected if you actively set up the bookings feature in your Google business profile. Whether booking a free consultation or something else is up to you, but once set up this metric will always show how many successful bookings there have been. If you do not set up bookings in your profile, this metric will always have a value of 0.
Directions
For businesses that have a physical location, one of the more interesting metrics is the number of users who have requested directions to the business location from your Google profile. While it isn’t precise, as some people might ask for dinner directions but never actually visit, it’s a good indicator of how effective your Google business profile is at attracting new customers from your local area.
Website clicks
This is a simple one, how many times the link to your website has been clicked in your Google Business Profile? Checking out your website is one of the first things a potential customer is likely to do, so seeing how many users have clicked that link compared to how many people have actually visited the profile is a good indicator of how well you have optimised everything.
Views
While interactions are essential for success, knowing how many views you get is also important, whether that is the numbers of views themselves, or in comparison to interactions to see just what percentage of viewers engage with your business.
You can also see exactly where your searches are coming from so you know the areas you need to improve on.
Search from mobile
With so many people using mobile devices today, it is important that your business is receiving views from this platform. A healthy percentage of your searches coming from mobile devices means you have a well-balanced profile that is bringing in good-quality leads.
Google’s own research shows that around 60% of all searches on the platform come from mobile devices, so search numbers around that level are a good indicator that your business profile is well-optimized.
Search from Desktop
As the name suggests this includes searches from computers, laptops and so on made from offices and homes. This remains a popular use of Google, making up between 20 and 30% of all searches.
Maps on Mobile
These numbers work in the same way as search numbers, but rather than Google itself, they record searches directly within Google Maps. Having a breakdown of these different ways in which users can interact with your Google Business Profile is essential for the optimization process.
Maps on desktop
In some cases, you might find that searches on desktop are more numerous than on mobile, depending on the type of business you operate. These numbers give you a good indication of where your leads come from.
Searches
These analytics record the number of times your business profile appears in relevant search results. They are broken down into different search types so that you can see exactly how your profile is performing and where your visitors are coming from.
Photo insights
An integral part of Google My Business, photo insights compare views for the photos you uploaded with comparable businesses and how their photos performed. In general, these numbers proved to be inaccurate and did not offer any valuable insight. As a result, Google removed this feature when it switched to Google Business Profile.
How customers search for your business
This is another tool that was part of Google My Business but has been removed since the switch to Google Business Profile. Instead, Google now focuses on more data-driven approaches, that offer better insight and more actionable summaries.
Directions
Previously, this data set provided information on the locations of users who are asking for directions to your business on Google Maps. This data is no longer available though and instead, the directions data set simply counts how many users have requested directions regardless of location.
How to Use These Metrics to Improve Your Business Profile
Having access to all this data is only part of the process, of course, you need to know how to gain reliable insight from the numbers. From that insight, you must also build effective solutions to help you refine your Google Business Profile and extract the most value from it.
Optimize for better visibility
At its heart online promotion of your business is a numbers game. The more people who see your Google Business Profile, the more people who will click on it, and the more people who will buy from you.
By analyzing searches, search numbers and so on, you can get a good idea of keywords and other optimizations that put your business in front of potential customers. This is key for increasing sales today but also helps build awareness that transforms into increased sales in the future. By ensuring that your Google Business Profile is high in relevant searches all the time, you build that local following that gives you a platform for long-term, sustainable local success.
Engage more with Customers
Gaining insight into the type of visitors your Google Business Profile is receiving helps you understand the kind of content that they will respond to. For instance, if you’re visitors are mostly using mobile devices, video content is a great way to capture their interest.
Your Google Business Profile gives several options for engaging with customers beyond the content you post, with Q&A style content and reviews both excellent tools for engaging with your visitors.
Adjust your strategy based on keywords
No matter how good your keyword research may be, search trends change over time. You need to tweak your optimization to suit. One of the key details that analytics shows is where exactly your visitors are coming from and what search terms they are using to find you.
Think of this information as a blueprint for your keyword optimization. Monitor the data and you will be able to see new keyword popularity and adjust your Google Business Profile to maximize visibility for those search terms. This keeps you on top of industry changes and ensures that you are making full use of your profile’s potential.
Focus on Mobile Optimization
Numbers don’t lie, with mobile platforms dominating Google users, for most businesses mobile searches will be by far the most common. It makes sense then, that this is the area to focus on when optimizing your Google business profile.
From photos and videos to other content, keywords and other optimizations, ensure that your Google business profile is optimized well for all mobile platforms.
Conclusion
Google Metrics offers a wide range of valuable data that gives you a clear understanding of exactly who your visitors are, the searches that they are using to find you, and the platforms they are using when they make those searches.
Using this insight, you can adjust your strategies to ensure that your Google Business Profile is optimized for maximum performance and delivering the engaging and effective user experience that helps grow your business.
As Google Business Profile experts, the team at Grid Rankers understand exactly how to translate performance metrics into improved strategies to deliver the increased visibility, higher visitor numbers and revenue growth that businesses need.
Talk to our experts today to see how we can take care of your Google Business Profile Optimization needs, so you can focus on your business.
FAQ
Does Google business performance data include data from Google ads?
It can, yes. You need to have the location extension in your Google Ads account so that users can click on to go to your business profile. The data for those clicks appears in your Google Business Profile data.
Does Google business performance data include voice searches?
No. Voice searches are not currently included in the data.