Google My Business report shows how people found your business

Google My Business has upgraded the new performance report, which was an upgrade from the Insights report, to add a section for people who viewed your business profile. This new section shows you how people found your local listing, either on desktop or mobile and either through Google Search or Google Maps.

What the report looks like. You can access the report by logging into Google My Business, clicking on your business, and selecting the Insights tab on the left. Then you can access the new performance reports at the top of that page. Once you are in there, if you scroll down, there is a section that shows “how people discovered you.”

Here is a screenshot from my business:

As you can see, the “people who viewed your business profile” section on the left gives you a break down of who viewed your profile on Google Search vs Google Maps and then by desktop device or mobile device.

The right hand side data is query data, similar to what Google showed in the old insights report.

I should note, this report for platform and device breakdown rolled out as a beta in late January. This was shortly after Google launched the other metrics in early January.

New help document. Google has updated the help document to add a section for the “users who viewed your profile” section. The section explains it is the “number of unique visitors to your profile. A user can be counted a limited number of times if they visit your Business Profile on multiple devices and platforms such as desktop or mobile and Google Maps or Google Search. Per breakdown device and platform, a user can only be counted once a day. Multiple daily visits aren’t counted.”

There are some caveats Google pointed out:

• Since this metric represents the number of unique users, it may be lower than the number of views you find on Google My Business and in email notifications. 
• Since the metric focuses on views of the Business Profile, as opposed to overall views of the Business on Google, it may also be lower than the number of views you find on Google My Business and in email notifications.

Why we care. This data gives us even more insight into how customers and users find our or our customer’s businesses. The more insights and analytics we can get from Google, the more informed we can be when helping our customers and closing new deals and making more revenue.

So check out the report in your Google My Business account and dig in.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He 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.