https://youtu.be/LCzri4tXuF0
Understanding your Google My Business Insights
What is the #1 source of phone calls to your business?
And no, we’re not talking about Google calling you. That NEVER happens unless you specifically request a call for verification or you’re an Adwords customer, as Shawn Kerr explains.
We’re talking about calls from customers that find you on Google and use Google to call your business.
It’s very likely your Google My Business page is your #1 source of calls and once you have claimed it, you can find out exactly how many calls that is. Google released Google My Business in July 2014 and for the purposes of this article, Google My Business is interchangeable with your business Google+ page.
How does it work? In searches on a mobile device, Google will serve a result showing an image of your business (now also showing a review score), your business category and your business name with these 3 buttons:
1) Call: Click and your phone number will appear on a mobile device to start a call
2) Directions: Click and Google takes you to Google Maps to find your business
3) Website: Click and Google takes you to the website you have associated with your Google My Business Page
In desktop searches, Google My Business powers the information shown in the Local Stack — the list of search results showing two sets of information with the “red teardrop” that matches the markers on a map in the right hand column — with 2 sections of information:
1) The left of the listing shows your business name, review score and a link to your business Google+ (aka Google My Business) page
2) The right of the listing shows your business address and phone number with a double arrow (>>) to show more information in the far right column, including images for your business, your zip code and more detailed review information.
So your Google+/Google My Business page is VERY IMPORTANT in customer searches and their interactions with your business. Let’s dig deeper into what we can learn about this page.
From your Google My Business dashboard, select View Insights to get more information. According to Google, you should see the following three tabs:
1) Visibility
2) Engagement
3) Audience
We’re going to focus on the reporting available in the Visibility tab, since Engagement and Audience track your interactions within Google+ and for most businesses, there isn’t enough active G+ members to show any meaningful statistics. Because of this, most graphs in the Engagement and Audience sections typically show a “Not Enough Data” message.
Data in the Visibility section can be viewed across 3 possible date ranges: the last 7, 30 or 90 days, except for the Phone Calls graph which allows you to view by the day of the week across the data range of last 7 days, last 4 weeks and last 12 weeks — close but slightly different than the other graphs.
There is no way at this time to set custom date ranges, so to track this data long-term requires recording elsewhere, typically in a spreadsheet. LocalU has a post on how to do this as easily as possible.
The Visibility tab shows 4 separate graphs:
1) Views
This tracks the number of views for your Google+ page and its contents. The All-time total is based on the cumulative views starting from October 1, 2012. Recently, Google added more detail so you can track these views across 4 types:
a) Search views: Results in Google searches, most likely in the “Local Stack” — either the mobile view with click to call, click for directions and click to website or the desktop result with the map marker and additional information in the right-hand column. Generally, this should be your highest number and might even rival users to your website.
b) Google+ page views: Actual views of your Google+ page. This is normally the 2nd lowest number.
c) Post views: Views of posts on your Google+ page. If you even have Google+ posts, hopefully you’ll see some views, but since most businesses don’t, this number is usually the smallest.
d)Photo views: Views of your Google+ photos across Google, including Google+, Google Search, Google Image Search, Google Maps and “other properties.” This is usually the 2nd highest number and we expect might overlap with the highest result — search views, since images are often served with those results.
2) Clicks
This tracks the 3 interactions allowed with your Google+ page in search results:
a) To your website: Your Google+ page might be a leading source of website traffic.
b) For driving directions:
c) For phone calls: Your Google+ page is very likely your top source of calls. Unless your customers are regular Skype (or other desktop IP phone users), expect this number to come almost entirely from mobile devices.
The next two sections dig deeper into these last two measurements . . .
3) Driving direction Requests
Not a graph, but a map view, Google records the location of Driving direction requests with a heat map, showing bright red spots for the highest areas where users make this request.
4) Phone Calls
This graph shows phone calls by Day of the Week across the weekly time ranges (one week, four weeks or twelve weeks). Use the data in the Clicks graphs to get your total number of phone calls.
Basically, your business’s Google+ (Google My Business) page is now its phone book listing. Google has created these “splash” pages for your business to show up quickly in search results to answer your customer’s most pressing questions — finding your website, calling your business or getting directions to your business.
Track this data as closely (or even more closely) than you would the Google Analytics data on your website. David Kutcher has a very good post on how your Google Insights works with you Google Analytics on Linkedin.
