Google Local Business Center Adds Detailed Analytics

Jun 1, 2009 at 2:38pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The Stone Temple Blog noticed the Google Local Business Center has started adding detailed analytics to each business profile. Let me start off by explaining that I personally do not see it for my business, but they posted screen captures on the blog.

If you go to the Google Local Business Center and you see a “New” link to view a report, that means you have access to it. The reports show Google Analytics like graphs and charts. The reports are broken down as follows:

(1) Impressions and Actions: Google will show you all your business profile views (impressions) and then plot the actions, which include clicking on the “more info,” “Driving Directions” and/or clicking through to your web site. Each action is shown on the chart, when you hover over the graph. Here is a picture from John:

(2) Top Queries & Driving Directions Origin: The second main type of report is the report that shows the top search queries that lead to the impressions and any uses of driving directions to the business:

Postscript from Greg: Though simple and straightforward, this is going to be pretty compelling to many local businesses that haven’t seen this kind of data before — or haven’t paid attention. Especially interesting is the driving directions (online-offline) data. Another thing not reflected in the screens above is a “completeness” barometer in the upper right of the dashboard that shows how complete Google deems the business listing. That should motivate SEOs and local businesses to add more information, including images and video, to presumably get better exposure. If in fact it works along those lines Google will benefit by having richer and broader local data from the businesses themselves (and their surrogates).

I have some additional thoughts on my personal blog Screenwerk.

Postscript from Barry: The Google LatLong Blog announced it the following day and posted this video:

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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