Google Business Profile Insights Update

If you've noticed a drop in some of your Google Business Profile (GBP) metrics (previously Google My Business), you might be wondering what's going on.

Rest assured, there's no need to panic—the cause is a recent Google API update that's designed to improve data integrity and show accurate search terms for local businesses.

In this blog post, you will find key take-aways, including a summary of the update and an explanation on why you might be seeing a drop in Google Business Profile metrics.

What is Google Business Profile Insights?

GBP Insights provides data about a business's local search performance, such as the number of profile views, how searchers find the business, and how they engage with the profile. Unlike other free Google tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics, Google Business Profile Insights focuses solely on local search presence and performance.

By consistently measuring local performance, businesses can gain valuable insight into their local search performance across mobile and desktop surfaces, including understanding how frequently certain search terms find their Business Profile.

The feature also offers a range of search-based metrics to measure customer engagement and performance and can be used by organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to multi-location enterprise brands.

The Google Business Profile Insights Changes and What They Mean for Your Business:

Google made some changes to its APIs that impact how it defines certain metrics on GBP, including profile views, searches, and direction requests. This update was made to increase the quality of data available to you. Also, Google has since removed certain data points from its Business Profile performance insights dashboard.

These include:

• Post views and clicks
• Query volumes grouped by direct, brand, and discovery
• Views across photos uploaded by users 

As such, businesses will no longer have the same visibility into how their Posts and photos are performing.

However, businesses will still have access to:

• Map views (desktop and mobile)
• Search views (desktop and mobile)
• Website clicks
• Call clicks
• Driving direction clicks
• Keyword queries

As a result of this change, you may notice a decrease in profile views compared to previous periods, but this will generally be true for all businesses.

Why did Google make these changes?

Google has not provided any specifics about its decision to remove the aforementioned data points, but there are a few possible explanations.

One is that daily data granularity may not provide a complete picture of user behavior, while smaller data points may be deleted by Google to protect user privacy.

It’s also possible that, in line with Google’s commitments to improve user privacy and data protection, the search giant is concerned about data storage and retention policies that could be linked to individual user behavior.

Specifically with respect to photo metrics, it’s possible Google may be making it difficult to connect photo insights to search performance within its search algorithm.

Despite the removal of photo metrics, businesses should still focus on photo collection and optimization in GBP, as photos remain a great way to visually showcase a business’s products and services.

Don't worry, This Update is a Good Thing!

It's understandable if you're worried that your business is suddenly less popular with the public, but that's not actually the case. In fact, there's some great news to share.

One of the most exciting things about Google’s latest API is their ‘Search Terms’ card that allows a small and medium-sized business (SMB) to hone in on the exact keywords that customers are using to find their business. This tool enables you to identify the specific keywords that customers are using to find their business. With Google's new focus on unique user interactions, you can be confident that the Search Terms data is accurate and useful for optimizing your GBP.

In other words, even though you may see a dip in profile views thanks to the Google Business Profile insights update, you now have access to more valuable data to help you (us) improve your online presence.

We encourage you to leverage the Search Terms card to understand your customers' search behaviors and enhance your GBP accordingly.

With Google's new API update, in the dashboard, on your Google Insights page, you will now see a search breakdown, allowing you to see the specific search terms that led customers to your GBP. This is a valuable opportunity for you to gain insight into your search engine optimization (SEO) and the keywords that are driving traffic to your business.

To access this data, simply navigate to your Business App, go to Listing Builder, and select Google Insights.

You can also go one step further. You can use the Top Keywords feature in Reputation Management Pro (when activated) to view the most common topics mentioned in your Google reviews and the sentiment analysis associated with those keywords.

This way, you get two layers of data: What people are searching for in Google, and what the recurring themes are in Reviews.

And while we're talking about Reviews, let's talk a little bit about repsonding to reviews. As we've discussed in the past, it is critical to be collecing as many reviews for your bsuenss as you can, and toe REPSOND to every review.

Remeber, the AI-powered responses available through Reputation Management Pro and Social Marketing Pro can save you time and improve engagement with your customers.

The “suggest reply.” feature makes it all so simple and efficient!

Summary

Here are some tips for tracking the performance of your business listings :

• Keep monitoring your GBP - there are lots of good insights to help you run your business.
• Use customer reviews and insights within our tool Reputation Management to evaluate your businesses’ performance and what your customers are saying.
• Pay attention to the number of leads generated from each listing and optimize lower-performing listings by ensuring up-to-date business information, optimizing the primary category, adding additional categories, etc.
• Monitor keyword performance to inform your keyword strategy.
• Analyze both mobile and desktop performance using the new APIs that give access to mobile and desktop performance for views in Google Maps and Search.

By understanding the treasure trove of data available at your fingertips, and how quickly you can act on customer feedback, you can positively impact your businesses' online presence and overall performance.

Feel free to contact one of our experts if you would like more information or if you are ready to take control, and leverage your online presence. E-mail: info@reallocalpartners.com