How to access and understand your Google Business Profile's performance. See metrics for views, calls, directions, bookings, and more.
The Google Business Profile is a great tool, FREE from Google, to help you get on search results. Especially when people do searches like 'healthy restaurant near me', 'best CPA in San Marcos', 'veterinary in Carlsbad', 'wedding planner in San Diego'.
Please tell me you have a Google Business Profile for your business and keep it always up to date.
No?! You're missing out.
For those that have a GBP, it's a good idea to frequently check and see how it’s performing. I actually re commend clients to think of it as another social network, a very targeted one that cold work great right at the moment they are searching for you. and did I mention it is FREE form Google.
I don't know about you but I like what my friend Joe says: 'if it's free it's for me'
Just like your website’s analytics, checking your GBP’s performance helps you understand:
- How many calls you’re getting.
- How people are finding your listing.
- How many users are getting directions to your business.
- And more.
Let’s look at how you can get these performance insights from your Google Business Profile to track how people interact with your listing.
How to access your Business Profile’s performance insights
It's better to do this on desktop over mobile for easier reading, you can access performance insights directly from your Google Business Profile by clicking Performance.
Performance metrics for your Google Business Profile
Let’s review the metrics available. Remember that some of these are category-specific, so you may not have all these options.
Overview
The Overview section shows all interactions on your Google Business Profile – like when people call, message, make bookings, ask for directions and more.
How people discovered you
From the Overview section, scroll down to see two other important pieces of information:
- How people viewed your profile.
- The keywords people used to get to your listing.
It’s also very valuable to look at the keywords people used to find your Google Business Profile.
The Searches metric is updated at the beginning of each month. Updates can take five days to show up, according to Google.
Calls
Show all calls made from your Google Business Profile. This obviously would only measure those calls on mobile devices made by people using the click-to-call button on your profile. This number would not include people on desktop devices who manually enter your phone number into their phone to call you.
One thing to remember is that the Call History feature was recently deprecated and suddenly turned back on a few months later. Since then, the number of missed calls by weekday or time of day seems inaccurate. I’m not sure if this is something that Google is going to eventually fix or not.
Messages
The Messages section is for businesses that have turned on their GBP’s Messages/Chat feature. This metric shows how many messages have been sent from your Business Profile.
Here you can see how you are performing at responding to chat messages you receive. Remember, you should strive to reply to messages you receive within 24 hours – or else Google could take the Messaging feature away from you!
Bookings
Bookings measure the number of completed bookings by customers. To get data for this, you must set up bookings with the recently-added Google Calendar feature (if you pay for a Google workspace) or through another booking software (e.g., Calendly).
Restaurant booking is another quirky insight that can be inaccurate depending on how you have your bookings set up. So, depending on your situation, the Booking insights may not be accurate.
Directions
Directions shows everyone who used your Google Business Profile to get directions to your business location. Note that if you are a service area business (SAB) and do not show your physical location in your GBP listing, you will not see this option in the Performance section.
Menu
The Menu metric measures the number of people who viewed your restaurant’s menu content. Menu content includes detailed dish information, menu photos and the menu link on your Business Profile.
Food orders
Food orders represents the number of orders placed for pickup or delivery directly from your Google Business Profile using an “Order with Google” provider. Food orders are only tracked if the restaurant has the menu items listed on their GBP listing and the person orders directly from one of the supported Google third-party providers. Other third-party apps like GrubHub or Doordash are not tracked here.
Website clicks
Website clicks are the number of times people click on your link to your website from your Google Business Profile.
Takeaways
Keep tabs on your GBP performance. Marketing is all about measuring your performance.
Check your Google Business Profile performance insights and see how you’re doing every month.
Find ways to improve the engagement you have with visitors.
Can you see why I recommend to use your GBP as if it's another social network: it can bring you a lot of customers. directly from Google searches. And it's FREE.
Don't have your GBP setup or up to date? We need to talk. Reach out please so we can help you.
