The four Google Business Profile metrics worth watching

Before anything else, a warning that affects every comparison you are about to make.

Your year on year numbers are not comparable

The report is now called Performance rather than Insights, and more importantly, Views was changed to count unique users instead of raw impressions. Several metrics, including photo views and device breakdown, were removed entirely.

A metric that switches from impressions to unique users falls sharply on the day it changes, for every business, with nothing having happened. If you are looking at a chart showing your views halving, check whether you are comparing two different measurements before you go looking for a cause.

The four that mean something

1. Calls

The number of times someone tapped the call button. This is the closest thing on the report to money, and for most local businesses it is the only metric here that would matter if the others disappeared.

If it falls while views hold steady, your listing is being seen and not acted on, which is a photos, reviews, hours or category problem rather than a ranking one.

2. Direction requests

The most under-rated number on the report. Nobody asks for directions to a business they are not going to, which makes this close to a purchase intent counter for anyone with premises.

It is also the one metric here that a competitor cannot inflate and a bot does not generate. If you track one number from this report over time, this is a strong candidate.

3. Website clicks

Useful mostly as a ratio against views rather than as a total. A rising view count with flat clicks means you are appearing to more people who are not convinced.

Tag this link so the traffic is identifiable in your analytics. It takes five minutes and it survives any change to this report, which given the last two years of changes is worth something. That is covered in call tracking without breaking consistency.

4. The search terms, and the branded split

The report shows the queries that surfaced your profile, and distinguishes branded searches, where someone typed your name, from discovery searches, where someone typed a category or service and found you.

This split is the most strategically useful thing in the report and the least looked at. Branded searches are people who already knew about you, from a referral, a van, a previous job. Discovery searches are new customers finding you for the first time.

A profile with excellent numbers that are almost entirely branded is not winning local search. It is receiving referrals through Google. That is fine, and it means the growth you were hoping local SEO would deliver has not started yet, and you would not know from the totals.

What to do when each one moves

• Views down, calls steady: usually a measurement or seasonality question. Check the date against the metric change before investigating.
• Views steady, calls down: the listing is not converting. Photos, review recency, hours, and whether your category still matches what people are searching.
• Direction requests down, everything else fine: check your pin, your hours and whether a special hours entry is showing you as closed.
• Discovery searches falling while branded holds: your position is slipping, which is a ranking problem and the one worth acting on quickly.
• Everything down at once: check the profile is still verified and not suspended before anything else.

What to ignore

• Total views as a headline number. It is the least actionable figure in the report and the one most likely to appear at the top of an agency's monthly summary.
• Month on month movements of a few percent. That is noise.
• Any comparison spanning the metric change described above.
• Anything a report presents without saying what you should do differently as a result.

This report is one of five things worth measuring, and on its own it cannot tell you whether the business is growing. The full set, including the ones that come from outside Google, is in the five numbers.