When you post your business listing on Google Business Profile, you receive access to Insights, which is loaded with useful information you can use to improve your reach with customers. You can see how people find your business, what happens when customers view your site, and when they’re most likely to arrive at your store or area of operation.
This guide reviews the types of information you can access and what it means for you.
How Customers Search for Your Business
There are numerous methods customers use to find the products and services they need. They may use Google’s Search function, Google Maps, or call your business with inquiries.
Google Business Profile Insights allows you to see how customers are finding you so that you can direct your marketing efforts accordingly. If you notice that more customers find you through local SEO, for example, you might not want to invest as much in traditional marketing.
Google Business Profile Insights data provides information on the following:
Google Search Queries
When you review your GBP Insights, you can see what terms people are using to find your website. This can be useful when determining how to optimize each of your landing pages, blog posts, and other site content.
When you’re trying to determine which keywords to target, GBP Insights provides useful information about how competitive each search term is and how many searches include each keyword. Targeting extremely competitive keywords can make it more difficult for you to appear in search results, but if the keywords that you’re targeting aren’t overly popular, you won’t have as many people searching for your content.
GBP Insights allows you to determine the most effective strategy and see if the strategies you’ve implemented have been successful.
Discovery Searches
A discovery search is when someone searches for a broad term such as “dog groomers near me” to find local businesses offering the services they need. GBP Insights tracks how many people in your area find you through a discovery search compared to a branded search. Branded searches, as the name implies, are brand-specific queries. Discovery impressions on your knowledge panel tell you how many times your website was shown in a search result for these types (discovery search) of inquires.
Branded Searches
A branded search result is when a customer is searching for a specific brand that might be related to your business. For example, if you sell a certain brand of tools, your business might show up in a search related to that brand.
Understanding what products your customers are searching for can help you update your business listing to include references to the most popular products people are looking for and removing those of little interest to searchers.
Direct Searches
A direct search is an inquiry using the address, phone number, or business name listed on your business profile. Customers searching this way may have purchased products or services from you in the past or made a mental note to return to your website after a previous search.
Google Maps
If your business has a storefront, many customers may find you on Google Maps. They want to know how close your location is to their homes (or work), and might use maps to obtain driving directions. It’s important to include a map or address on your website that customers can access on a mobile device; many may rely on a GPS to arrive at your location.
Google Ads
Google Insights allows you to see how effective your Google Ads are at driving traffic to your business through online campaigns and phone calls. For instance, if you’ve invested in an advertisement, you’re going to want to see how effective the ad is and assess if it’s cost-effective.
GBP Insights shows what customer actions come out of your ad campaign and your website.
Phone Calls
Even when potential customers find you through a Google Search, they may have questions that aren’t answered on your website. Knowing if your website is driving traffic to you via phone inquiries is important, and Google logs phone call actions to help you understand where calls are coming from, whether from search, maps, or elsewhere.
You can also review popular call times, including volume for time of day and day of the week.
Customer Actions
Knowing how customers interact with your site is as important as knowing what search queries are bringing them to your business website. These business insights include how long each person stays on your site, whether they click through to other links, and what they do once they leave.
If you’re noticing that people aren’t clicking on your business profile, service pages, or contact page after reading a post, you gain further insights into user behavior. They may not be finding the information they’re wanting or your call to action isn’t as effective as it could be.
Foot Traffic Insights
GBP Insights can let you see when you’re getting the most physical traffic at your store or area of operation. This is useful information when planning employee schedules so you don’t have a staff shortage during the busiest times of the day or week. It’s equally inefficient to pay staff to work when customers aren’t as likely to show up.
Google Business Profile Insights Explained: The Bottom Line
The wealth of information that you can access through Insights can help you determine where to invest your time, efforts, and money when marketing your business. You can also learn more about what drives your customers by seeing how they contact you, what search terms they use to find you, and what products they’re most interested in.
If you haven’t taken advantage of this GBP feature yet, you’re missing out on an invaluable business tool. And if you need more help navigating Insights or any of your SEO or digital marketing needs, give Uptick a call, we’re happy to help!
As a freebie, here’s an in-depth look at how to add or remove photos from your Google Business Profile, something every customer will see when searching for you online!
NOTE: As of December 2021, Google My Business (GMB) is now Google Business Profile (GBP). This article has been updated from the original postdate of July 6, 2021 to reflect this new name change and relevant information.
