The data for April ’10 is totally off. For each of those accts we run a 24/7 google ppc campaign on a regional basis. That way we can look at impressions and clicks. Every critical keyword phrase runs on exact phrase and can be captured by other phrases. We are able to check demand (impressions) and how we do against that demand.

My assumption is that there is pretty good overlap between the geography for the ppc campaigns and the geography for maps, wherein our record could show.

Simply the data from the dashboard is totally out of whack in April for each of those accts relative to months before and after and totally out of whack with impressions from PPC.

Something was amiss in April, at least with these three accounts. Check your accts for that month.

I’ve noticed these “dashboard breakdowns” from time to time.

My point is that the letter is nice. Its another google sales tool.

Meanwhile the data from the dashboard is very very inconsistent. Its not a reliable tool, in my experience. The breakdowns are consistent and regular over time.

My suggestion: Google: Fix the dashboard!!!!! Pronto. The more people who see it, the more people who will identify and complain about the problems.

Yes I would say most of the Pages I look after – their actions have dropped down to 0… The dashboard has been stuck about a week behind for the last 7-8 days and all my listings are showing to Sat 31 July.

Now I know this is a bug because on several of these listings I managed to have good ranking improvements on the Friday 30 July and the impressions showed a significant increase yet the clicks nose dived. All the impressions were showing as highly qualified keywords for the business so I very much doubt the actions stats are correct – a definite bug.

I’m in the UK by the way – Edinburgh, Scotland to be exact.

Also I’m intrigued how you opt in for the monthly update report? I have never received one for any Place Pages?

Cheers,

Andrew

Its nice Google is sending us friendly letters. It would be nicer if they sent “good” data. You know…garbage in…garbage out.

We’re seeing the same issue with actions dropping off in the last days of the month – some accounts go down to 0, others report a handful (3-5 actions) where they were getting hundreds before. Change in filtering or dashboard issues?

Just looked at a couple of dashboard records, along with that email. Uniformly EVERY SINGLE RECORD SHOWS NO ACTIONS FOR THE LAST SEVERAL DAYS OF JULY.

At the same time in the aggregate there were hundreds of impressions and a long history before these past few days of a reasonable number of “maps ACTIONS”.

I believe the dashboard is malfunctioning again.

Is anyone else seeing that. I see tags actions on days with no Maps actions.

On a regular basis I see the dashboard underperforming and showing glitches in reporting data that should be of real importance and interest to the smb operator.

Realistically, Google is out there charging away working to communicate and primarily increase the number of smbs that claim records, and incidentally open up a channel for email and communications.

Down the road Google will work to get them into tags at $25/month or $300/year if maintained that long.

The real target though is PPC advertising opportunites The revenue opportunities are huge compared to tags. (and frankly if tags works they can increase the monthly price)

Of note; in late July Greg Sterling reported average PPC spend of about $9,000/year.

That is a lot more money. The research came from a reseller handling the PPC accounts for over 20,000 smbs. (as Greg noted—businesses that tended to advertise in old print YP’s).

There is a lot of money out there for local advertising and PPC. SMBs will spend it directly, Resellers will place it, and Google will try and directly get its piece without having to share the “loot” with the resellers.

At the least, Google. If you are going to attract potential advertisers into your web please do two things that are typical and desirable:

1. Give us accurate information.
2. Communicate with us.