Google My Business Insights & How To Use Them For SEO
Google Business Profile insights (formerly known as Google My Business insights) provides business owners with information about how their business profile is performing. This includes where customers are discovering your business (Google Search and Maps), keywords used to find your business, and customer actions such as calls and website clicks.
Insights can be helpful for determining the impact of changes made after a Google Business Profile audit, and going in-depth about metrics associated with your business.
Table of contents
Follow this guide to use Google My Business insights:
How to access insights
Follow these steps to access insights for your business profile:
- Sign in to Google My Business on desktop
- Select the location to manage (if multiple locations)
- Click the Performance button
- Select the insights you wish to view
Insights overview
Upon clicking the performance button (see above), you’ll be taken to the insights Overview section of your profile.
This includes interactions (when people call, message, make bookings, and ask for directions).
📈 How to use: This information can be helpful for understanding trends and gauging monthly performance.
Additionally, you’ll see insights about where your Business Profile was viewed on Google.
📈 How to use: These insights can help inform your overall SEO strategy by prioritizing where to focus on ranking, and even contribute to the decision-making process and strategy for paid efforts such as Google Ads.
Here, you’ll also find keyword insights.
📈 How to use: Keyword insights is extremely valuable for setting up rank tracking, prioritizing keywords, and other SEO efforts such as content creation.
Pro Tip: You can use this keyword research template to better inform your Local SEO campaign, and identify other keyword opportunities (such as those that competitors are ranking for but your business does not).
Call insights
In the Performance dashboard, you’ll also find call insights.
📈 How to use: Similar to interactions, call insights can be used to better understand call trends, and gauge how impactful your Business Profile is when it comes to generating calls. This data can also be used to understand popular call times, and identify when calls may be slipping through the cracks (missed calls) to potentially inform staffing decisions.
Message insights
Next, you’ll be able to find the Message insights tab.
📈 How to use: Businesses that have the message feature enabled for their business profile will be able to view popular times their business receives message from customers and gauge response times.
Note: This feature can be enabled when setting up your Google Business Profile or at any time for eligible businesses.
Booking insights
Businesses (such as restaurants) that have enabled bookings through their business profile will be able to view how many bookings were made through their Google Business Profile.
Direction insights
Google Business Profile insights also details information about direction requests made to your business through your profile.
📈 How to use: Businesses that have physical locations where customers can visit may choose to use this information to information staffing decisions, understand trends, and identify seasonal trends.
Website clicks & insights
Clicks made to your website from you Google Business Profile can also be viewed within the performance dashboard.
📈 How to use: Businesses that have a website linked to from their business profile can better understand how much traffic is being generated from their Google Business Profile to their website.
Pro Tip: This information can also be tracked through UTM parameters, which can be easily created through Google’s Campaign URL Builder
Menu insights
Restaurants that have added a menu link can view insights about how customers are engaging with their menu.
📈 How to use: Restaurant owners can make informed decision based on menu insights by determining menu photos, items, and links that get the most engagement. Menu content includes detailed dish information, menu photos, and the menu link on your Google Business Profile.
Food order insights
Restaurants that have enabled food orders through Google will also be able to view insights for orders placed for pickup or delivery directly from your Business Profile on Google.
📈 How to use: This feature can help restaurant owners determine valuable partnerships, and understand customer preferences for ordering online. Businesses that have enabled this feature will have Order Pickup and Order Delivery featured on their business profile in Google Search and Maps.
Pro Tip: Restaurants can get other additional features on their profile and in Google Search by adding business attributes. Use this list of Google My Business attributes to further optimize your profile.
Post insights
Upon creating and publishing a post to your business profile, you’ll be able to view insights about individuals posts which includes impressions and clicks (if you’ve added a link).
📈 How to use: Post insights can be used to determine which posts generate the most engagement. Test different topics, media, and content to understand what performs best for your business.
Pro Tip: Use this Google My Business post image size and examples guide to optimize and maximize engagement for posts.
Photo insights (deprecated)
Update: Photo insights are now deprecated and no longer available after Google’s recent update to their dashboard and profile accessibility.
Google provides two reports for photos, which are both helpful for understanding how your listing compares to competitors.
Photo views: It’s important to note if your competitors are receiving more views. If so, this usually means that competitors have more engaging photos uploaded to their profile.
Photo quantity: This is another important metric to note. If businesses like yours have significantly more photos, you’ll want to include photo uploads as a high priority later on during optimizations. As mentioned above, it’s important to focus on quality and engaging photos that are relevant to your business.
Additional considerations
While Google Business Profile insights can be insightful, it’s generally best to track optimizations and profile updates through 3rd party software. This includes setting up ranking tracking and GeoGrid reports through Local Viking and other helpful software such as BrightLocal for building citations and tracking reviews.
