Google offers incredible tools to give you an inside look at how people can find your business listing on the web. Because many customers find businesses on Google Search and Maps, Google focuses on how customers use Search and Maps to find your listing, and what they do once they find it.
How does it work?
Google 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 the following:
How customers find your listing
Where customers find you on Google
Search Queries
Customer actions taken
Direction requests
Phone calls
Photos for optimization
What your business is known for
How customers find your listing
This section of Insights shows how many customers found you and how they found you. Click or tap the chart on the dashboard to see the percentage of all customers that found you via each of these methods:
Direct searches: A customer directly searched for your business name or address.
Discovery searches: A customer searched for a category, product, or service that you offer, and your listing appeared.
Branded searches: A customer searched for your brand or a brand related to your business. This category will only appear if your listing has appeared at least once for a branded search.
Total searches: The total number of direct, discovery, and branded searches.
Want to catch the eyes of people who haven't discovered your business yet? Try running an ad on Google. This will allow you the way to target results instantly!
Search queries
Search queries show you the queries used to find your business on Google. In the Google can track common terms and search trends for your business. These queries should help you create better Posts with Google and even Ads to engage your customers. This product works ahead of your website and acts like your website. Recently Google has been explaining No Click action to your website. In other words, people can click on Google Maps, view your products, special offers and call you to order, WITHOUT EVER SEEING your website!
Search queries focus on the terms that your customers used to find your business on Local Search and Maps. We like to make these terms available for you the owner of your business available so you can target them with Google Ads and or in replies in Reviews and Q & A’s. This is what our team is trained to do for you.
You can easily see where customers find you on Google
With Google Maps, you’ll see the number of views your listing received through each of these services:
View on Search: A customer found your business via Google Search. Displays as “Search views” on bulk reports.
Views on Maps: A customer found your business via Google Maps. Displays as “Maps views” on bulk reports.
Total views: The total views of both Google Search and Google Maps. To view details on how many customers found your business on a specific product and day.
Yellow Pages used to show addresses with a map back in the day, but now Google Maps has that and more. You can also see how many people wanted directions to your locations. This section also shows where customers are when they request directions to your business.
You can even see, on the map displayed, you’ll see your location pinned and the popular places you customers are when they ask Google Maps for directions to your address. The total number of requests broken down by city or neighborhood are displayed as well.
Phone calls: You can track phone calls here or with a tracking phone number you can get from Google at no charge. Using this tool, you can see displays when and how often customers called your business through your business listing.
Photos: (this is so important to keep adding and optimizing them)
This section displays the number of photos associated with your listing and how often they’re viewed compared to similar businesses in the following graphs:
Photo views: How many times your photos have been viewed.
Photo quantity: How many photos you’ve uploaded to your business listing.
You can use the dropdown menu in the top-left corner lets you adjust the time-frame to see data from the last week, month, or quarter. Hovering over a specific day on the graph shows you data for that day only.
If there are enough businesses in the area similar to yours, there are lines on the graphs that compare your photo data with photo data to the similar businesses. For example, if you manage a restaurant, your business would be compared to other restaurants in your area. On the right side of the graph you’ll see the total number of photos based on the data points you’ve selected.
You can also highlight, what your business is known for. This section of Insights provides customers' opinions of your restaurant or cafe (e.g. cozy, romantic, or notable cocktails).
Since customers' opinions are based on their experience, the information is subjective. It's considered to be valuable to other customers, as it describes the feel & ambiance for a place. Unless proven false, Google will not remove this information without validation. This is just scratching the surface of value you can expect to receive from this product.
This is an example of a Bloomerang client who improved their ranking on Google Maps. In a few short months, Ballard Blossom, Inc. of Seattle jumped from #25 to #2.
Google is constantly improving and adding functionality to Maps listings
While a listing on Google maps is free, verifying your listing is paramount. Now, the more you put in, the more you will get out! Google likes to see users making good use of their tools. The more you activate and use the tools offered by Google, the more value your listings have to them.
Google is a constantly-evolving information highway dedicated on bringing valid information to consumers on demand and the powerful marketing tools it provides are unlike anything that business owners have ever seen before. If you are not taking advantage of them already, you should start today. Need help? Your friends are Bloomerang are here to help - every step of the way. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line below.