How Can You Track the Performance of Your Google Business Profile?

When it comes to tracking the performance of your Google Business Profile listing, there are two main areas you should be concerned with: engagement and local ranking.

Google Business Profile itself provides performance insights that can help you monitor engagement, but what about tracking the ranking of your Google Business Profile? For that, you'll need a local rank tracker, like Local Falcon.

By combining Google Business Profile Insights with Local Falcon rank tracking reports, you can get a complete overview of your business listing's performance data, which you can use to help guide your Google Business Profile optimization and overall local SEO strategy.

Using Google Business Profile Insights To Monitor Engagement

To access Google Business Profile Insights, sign in to the Google Account you use to manage your listing(s), select the location you want to see performance data for (if you manage multiple locations), and navigate to "Performance." 

Once you do this, you can select a date range, and you'll see data for the following metrics for that time period:

1. Searches
2. Views
3. Direction requests
4. Calls
5. Website clicks
6. Messages
7. Bookings
8. Booking clicks
9. Interactions (total)
10. Food orders
11. Product views
12. Menu clicks

Note that not all of the above Google Business Profile performance metrics will appear for all profiles, since some of them only apply to certain categories of businesses and others require you to have specific features enabled.

Searches

The searches metric of Google Business Profile Insights shows you what queries people used to find your Google Business Profile listing during the selected date range. 

This metric is important for understanding how people are actually finding your business on Google Search and Maps, and can also give you ideas for what keywords to track your local search rankings for.

Views

Another important engagement metric available in Google Business Profile Insights is the total number of views your profile got during the given time period.

Note that the views metric only counts people who actually visit your listing, not the number of times it appears in searches. It also only counts unique views, so the same person can't get counted multiple times for visiting your profile more than once in a day.

Direction requests

The direction requests metric counts how many unique visitors requested directions to your business. This is a great metric for estimating how many people who viewed your Google Business Profile potentially went on to actually visit your physical location.

Calls

The calls performance metric for Google Business Profile shows how many people clicked on the "Call" button in your listing. 

This metric can help you get an idea of how many people called your business to request more information or perhaps make a reservation or book an appointment, depending on what type of business you have.

Website clicks

The Google Business Profile Insights website clicks metric is pretty self explanatory — it tells you how many visitors to your profile clicked on the link to your website.

Messages

The messages metrics shows you how many unique conversations you had with potential customers through the Google Business Profile Messages feature.

You might compare the total number of conversations to the number of chats that resulted in a desirable action, such as booking an appointment or making a reservation, to get an idea of the percentage of conversations that result in conversions.

Bookings

When you're tracking the performance of a Google Business Profile listing for certain types of service-based business, the bookings metric is one of the most important ones because it directly represents conversions, or actual bookings that were made and confirmed through your listing.

Booking clicks

The booking clicks metric shows you how many people clicked the booking link in your Google Business Profile, without necessarily completing the booking process. 

You can compare this number to the number of bookings to understand what percentage of people who click the booking link actually finish the process and confirm a booking.

Interactions (total)

Google Business Profile's interactions metric is a summary of the total number of all interactions with your profile. This could be a combination of the total number of direction requests, calls, website clicks, booking clicks, bookings, etc.

Food orders

For restaurants and other food service businesses that offer direct ordering through their Google Business Profiles, the food orders metric shows the total number of orders placed for takeout and/or delivery.

Menu clicks

Restaurants that showcase menus on their Google Business Profiles can also see metrics for engagement with those menus, including the number of clicks on menu items, photos, and URLs.

Product views

For retail Google Business Profiles that have a catalog of products sold at their brick-and-mortar stores, the product views metric shows how many times each catalog item was looked at by someone within the selected time period.

Using Local Falcon To Track Your Google Business Profile's Ranking

So, now you should have a good idea of how to measure Google Business Profile engagement using Google's own Insights, but what about monitoring your business listing's ranking in local search results?

Local Falcon is a local rank tracker built specifically to measure your Google Business Profile rankings for different search terms.

In order to start running local rank tracking scans, you'll first need to sign up for a Local Falcon account, if you haven't done so already. 

Then, log in to your account and navigate to "Run a Quick Scan" from your dashboard. Here you can add a business location by searching for it or importing it from a connected Google Account. 

After you set the location for the scan, choose what keywords you want to track your ranking for. Local Falcon automatically suggests keywords based on your Google Business Profile categories and other search terms that people are using to find your business, saving you time when it comes to keyword selection.

Lastly, you may want to change the Map Scan Radius and Grid Size to modify the area you're scanning — Local Falcon lets you track your local search rankings in an area with a radius of anywhere from 0.1 to 100 miles. 

For businesses in dense urban areas, you'll want a small radius of no more than a couple of miles, while for businesses in more rural areas you can use a larger radius to reflect how far away your potential customers may come from.

Once you've confirmed all the settings, run the scan and wait for your Scan Report to generate.  

When the scan is complete, you'll see an updated interactive Scan Grid (the Scan Explorer) showing your business's ranking at each data point scanned. Clicking on any of these data points will pull up a list of all competitors found at that grid point, providing insights into your rankings at a hyper-local level.

After analyzing the Scan Explorer results, open up the Scan Report to get even more Google Business Profile performance insights, including Falcon AI analysis and optimization recommendations.

What Google Business Profile Performance Metrics Are in a Local Falcon Scan Report?

Every Local Falcon Scan Report contains the following information:

1. Scan Settings used
2. ARP, ATRP, and SoLV scores
3. Scan Grid image
4. Falcon AI Report Analysis
5. Competitors

Scan Settings used

At the top of any Scan Report, you'll see information about what settings were used for the scan, including the keyword, the business location, and the Map Scan Radius and Grid Size settings.

ARP, ATRP, and SoLV scores

Your report's ARP, ATRP, and SoLV scores offer different ways to evaluate your Google Business Profile's performance in the local rankings.

ARP stands for Average Rank Position and shows how your location ranks in comparison with the top 20 listings found in the scan. ATRP stands for Average Total Rank Position and shows how your business ranks among all competitors found in the scan. These numbers both give you a good general idea of how your Google Business Profile listing is performing in local search results for the given keyword and area.

Now, your SoLV, or Share of Local Voice, score is the one you should really pay attention to — this number represents how often your business shows up in the top three positions on Google (the 3-Pack) out of the total possible times it could show up. You can use your SoLV score to help guide your local SEO efforts and work your way towards a spot in Google's 3-pack for specific keywords.

Scan Grid image

The Scan Grid image is just a screenshot of all the data points on the Scan Grid, showing your business's ranking at each point. 

Unlike in the Scan Explorer, you can't click on the data points here to pull up a list of competitors, but you can download the image to use for any local SEO reports you may be putting together.

Falcon AI Report Analysis

Now here's where things get really interesting —  Falcon AI provides AI-powered analysis of your Google Business Profile's rank tracking results in every Scan Report.

The Falcon AI Report Analysis will start by summing up your location's performance in the scan. It will then provide specific recommendations for optimizing your business listing or adjusting Scan Settings to get better data to help guide your optimizations and outrank competitors.

For example, Falcon AI might suggest that you add Posts to your Business Profile or focus on getting more positive reviews to increase your total number of reviews and average review score.

After the recommendations, Falcon AI may point out vulnerable competitors, who you might be able to outrank at specific points on the map if you implement some of the AI's recommendations to optimize your Google Business Profile.

Lastly, the Falcon AI Report Analysis will highlight strengths of your profile, giving you an idea of what optimizations are already completed and working in your favor.

Competitors

The final section of any Scan Report shows a list of all competitors found in the scan, ranked from best performing to worst performing. 

You can use this list to compare your Google Business Profile to competitors in terms of ARP, ATRP, and SoLV scores, Business Profile categories, and reviews.

Note that this is just one way to perform competitor analysis in Local Falcon. There are also dedicated Competitor Reports, which offer side-by-side comparisons of competitor listings and more.

Wrapping Up

Tracking the performance of your Google Business Profile is essential for understanding how customers interact with your listing and how it ranks in local search results. 

By using Google Business Profile Insights, you can monitor engagement metrics such as searches, views, direction requests, calls, website clicks, messages, bookings, and more.

Additionally, utilizing a local rank tracker like Local Falcon can help you track your Google Business Profile's ranking for different search terms and compare it to competitors.

By combining Google's Insights data with Local Falcon's rank tracking reports, you can gain a comprehensive overview of your listing's performance and use this information to optimize your profile and improve your local SEO strategy.

And remember, monitoring your Google Business Profile's performance is an ongoing process — make sure to regularly review your Insights and run rank tracking scans at regular intervals to get new data, identify trends, make informed decisions, and stay ahead of the competition in local search results!