Measuring Your Google Business Profile Performance

Data tells a story, clears up doubts and provides actionable insights. But if you don’t know what kind of data you need and where to get them, you can’t achieve business success. When you’re gathering and measuring data on your Google Business Profile performance, there are tons of information you can observe and study… but unfortunately, you’ll have to open several platforms and tools to get whatever you need. At DigitalMaas, we made it easy for you to find all the information you need all in one place.

But before that, let’s talk about what kind of data you should be looking for and how the Platform can simplify data gathering and interpretation for you.

Case in Point

A luxury brand has around 30 locations across the country. They do have Google Business Profiles in a location group, and even if they can download a report with all their location metrics, they just didn’t have the time to make comparisons from previous periods. They needed a solution with a few steps.

So eventually they signed up on the Platform and imported their locations. When everything was set up, they looked at the Performance Tab and saw that more than half of their locations have low search impressions and even lower total actions. Historically, their metrics haven’t improved much. They jumped on a call with a Customer Success Specialist and found a way to improve their metrics for those locations. After three months of working on each location, there was an overall 50% growth in Total Actions and nearly 400% increase in search impressions.

The company wouldn’t know that half of their locations aren’t doing well in Search and Maps if they didn’t see and compare the data. They didn’t have to download individual reports – all they needed to do was import their locations, see the data side-by-side, talk to our team for further support and make an informed decision.

Metrics to measure your Google Business Profile performance

Understanding these metrics is important because it gives you insight into how many people found you and how many are actively engaging with your profile, and seeing the rate of engagement for every reach, as well as seeing which buttons and links are more likely tapped or clicked by these users.

Some metrics are self-explanatory, while others need a little clarification. Here are the main metrics for Google Business Profile that you’ll see on the Platform:

1. Total search impressions – the total number of times customers found your Profile by search on Google Maps or Search
   • This is different from views, which are the number of visitors TO your Profile
2. Website clicks – total number of times users visited your website through your Profile
3. Directions – total number of times users asked for directions on how to get to your location
4. Phone calls – total number of times users clicked on your Profile to call you
5. Photo views – total number of times your business-owned photos were viewed by users (read why you should upload your own photos and what type of photos you can add to your Google Business Profile)

Notes

• This is not a final list. Google adds more metrics when they seem fit. We’ll add those metrics as we go along.
• Website clicks, directions and phone calls are collectively known as Total Actions

The Performance View on the DigitalMaas Platform

We’ve added a new function on the DigitalMaas Platform – aptly named the Performance View – that enables you to see your Google Business Performance across ALL your locations in just one dashboard. This makes it easy for you to compare which locations are doing great and which ones need a bit more work. You’ll be able to see metrics and how they fared from a previous period.

Choose one, a few or all locations

The Performance View offers you the capability to see all, just a few or one of your locations, depending on your needs. This is good if you’re comparing Profiles within a certain geographic location.

For example, if you have 100 locations on the Platform, and you only need to see the 20 locations in NSW, you can select those and their respective metrics will pop up on the Overview. Click Performance and you’ll see data just for those locations. Easy, right?

See top and least performing locations in one view

You’ll notice four large blocks at the top of the Performance View. These indicate which locations are performing well and not so well in terms of search impressions and total actions. This is great for multi-location businesses that want to compare locations and identify which ones need more updating.

Exclusive to the DigitalMaas Platform, this isn’t available on the Google Business Profile Manager. You can immediately see this summary without downloading anything.

Easily compare data from a previous period

There’s no need to bring out the calculator and memorise equations to get a percentage difference between the current date range and the previous period. The Platform automatically does this for you and you can quickly see how much your Profiles are improving over time.

Get more info with the Date Filter

Need data for the entire quarter? Just one month or a week? Depending on your needs, you can adjust the date and get the information you need in a few seconds. The Date Filter above the Performance Tab allows you to change the dates without a fixed period. There’s no need to download anything to get this timeframe – get your much-needed insights right away.

Choose insights that matter at the moment

Clear up your insights and take out what you don’t want to see for now. In case you don’t want to see some pieces of data, you can toggle them on and off by clicking the three columns on the upper right of the insights table. This quickly makes your table cleaner, easier to understand and clearer to present.

What do you need to do?

To see your GBP performance on the Performance View, make sure that all your locations have been imported to the Platform. They should be verified and live – even better if each location has complete information. Once your locations are on the Platform, you might need to wait for a tiny bit for these metrics to show up. But when they’re there, you’re good to go.

Save the time and energy looking at data that matter and make informed decisions right away.

Why are Google Business Profile performance metrics important?

We all know that metrics are important but what makes Google Business Profile performance metrics necessary for your business to succeed?

1. Know which areas on your Profile to improve on

We know that, as a business, it’s important for you to be top of mind for both prospects and existing customers. One way to do this is to rank high in Google Search and Maps. But what if this is a known issue across several of your Profiles? How can metrics help?

Google has three main ranking factors: relevance, distance and prominence. And to be able to hit all three factors, you need to have a complete, accurate and engaging Profile. Metrics can give you an idea on what areas you need to improve on.

For example, you notice that in a few of your locations, there aren’t too many people calling your stores. If this is a success indicator for your business, double check if you have the correct phone number on your Profiles (make sure they’re different or else Google can suspend you). The data gives enables you to take action immediately.

2. See which locations need further optimisation

Related to the first point, knowing how your locations are performing with the DigitalMaas Performance Tab help you further optimise and complete your Profile. Even if you take away Google from the equation – you want to ensure that your customers already know your business even before they click on your website or visit your store locations.

A more complete and regularly updated profile has more chances to rank on a search query, especially if it’s much nearer to the user’s location.

3. Empower your business across all your locations

Because of the metrics you’re seeing and because you’re taking actions to make your GBPs much better, you’re setting yourself up for online success. Understanding how locations are performing can aid you in targeting areas of improvement in your Profiles and ensure continued growth.

National marketing teams can effectively work with area managers across locations more easily now that all the integral Google Business Profile performance metrics are just in one place. It’s simple: make local marketing even easier for you with the DigitalMaas Platform. Sign up for a free account today and see what other awesome things you can do to make your business your customers’ first choice.