GMB launches richer insights across Search & Maps 

Google My Business (GMB) was one of the big marketing winners from a COVID-infused 2020, growing in stature and usefulness with every quarter.

However, for all its growing utility, reporting was always a bit thin on ground. Until now.

Following on from reporting upgrades in January, the latest round of improvements sees extra detail within GMB on how people accessed your business profile listing and improvements across a variety of surfaces, including Google Maps.

“Business Profile Performance reporting is moving closer to your profile on Search and Maps. You’ll be able to access more of the core profile metrics directly from your Business Profile. We start with interactions to let you know how often people have contacted you.

More metrics will follow over the next months and will include detailed reports about searches and the number of people who saw the profile.

Performance reporting is currently available on Search and will soon be available on Maps.

Data will be available for up to 6 months. You’ll be able to review your performance by selecting custom time frames, with interaction metrics updated daily and other metrics updated monthly”

Back in January, we saw the first ideation of the new performance report, which had some useful concepts but still looked a bit rough around the edges. Google then took it back to the workshop, polished the surface, added a gloss finish and here we are.

Understanding GMB Insights

GMB Insights give you an inside look at how people find your business listing on the web.

Because many customers find businesses on Google Search and Maps, Insights focuses on how customers use Search and Maps to find your listing, and what they do once they find it.

You can get Insights for individual listings or in bulk.

Insights data includes views, searches, and actions from both organic search results and Google Ads. Google Insights provides you different ways to understand how customers interact with your listing, including:

1. How customers find your listing
2. Search queries
3. Where customers find you on Google
4. Customer actions
5. Direction requests
6. Phone calls
7. Photos
8. What your business is known for

January’s reporting beta failed to distinguish between users who found a business via Google Maps as opposed to Search, but that has been tinkered with and is now available as a data point. It also neglected to report how many direction requests had been made, but that has been rectified.

Alongside those changes, GMB reporting also includes a section about people who viewed your business profile. Google has also updated their help document to reflect these changes, and to clarify certain points of contention about how the data is measured.

View your data on your Google My Business profile

Insights can be viewed through your GMB profile on Google Maps, while profile insights can be viewed by signing into your Google My Business profile. This is how.

1. Sign in to the same Google Account that you use for GMB.
2. Select the listing you want to manage (only do this if you have more than one).
3. Click Insights, which should be in the left menu.

Users can download bulk insights for multiple insights to a spreadsheet. This is how.

1. Select the listings you want to download.
2. Above the list of your location, click Download Insights.
3. A screen will open next to the report you’ve requested. Click Get Report.
4. Select the time-frame you want Insight Data from.
5. On the bottom right of the screen, you’ll see the Download button. Click it.