Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google’s Data-Rich Dashboard in Local Business Center- Official Announcment
Here is the official Google announcement of the new LBC Dashboard reproduced in its entirety:
New feature will provide businesses with new visibility into the ways their local listings are found on Google, enabling them to make smarter decisions about attracting customers
Today Google is launching a new dashboard feature in the Google Local Business Center (LBC) that will provide business owners with a powerful level of information about how Google users are interacting with their local listings. The Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content of their listings in Google Search and Google Maps. With the addition of the new dashboard, the LBC will now draw upon local search data to help owners optimize their local listings and their other efforts to attract more customers.
It’s estimated that 82% of consumers use search to find local businesses*, and the LBC dashboard will initially provide business owners with the following data on that activity in Google Search and Google Maps:
- Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a search result on Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
- Actions: How many times users interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times users clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
- Top search queries: Which queries led users to the business listing; for example, whether more customers are finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”.
- Zip codes where driving directions come from: Lists and maps of the zip codes users are coming from when they request directions to a listing.
With the LBC dashboard, business owners will be able to identify trends, such as days of the week when interest in their business spikes, or seasonality in the types of searches that lead potential customers to their listings. Owners will also be able to better determine how changes to their listings – such as adding a video or refining their category – influence the traffic to that listing.
The LBC dashboard also allows business owners to better measure the impact of changes to associated web content or adjustments to marketing campaigns – such as a new post to the company blog, or a new advertising campaign – by measuring impressions, actions, location, and more before and after the changes.
So, for example, a restaurant could host an event and then watch to see if queries for its business name increase in the following days. Or it could measure the results of an advertising campaign targeted at a nearby town by watching to see if more people are searching for directions to the restaurant from that zip code after the ad runs. It could also experiment with the information in its LBC listing to uncover which configurations produce more hits in Google search for certain keywords. With this data, owners will be able to make informed decisions about the most effective ways to promote their businesses and attract new customers.
The LBC dashboard will be pre-populated at launch with Google data from the past 30 days, and it will then be updated daily. All data available in the LBC dashboard will be anonymized and aggregated, so no individual Google user data will be shared.
The dashboard is accessible to any business owner who has claimed his or her listing in the Local Business Center. Business owners who do not yet have an LBC account can quickly create theirs for free by visiting http://www.google.com/lbc. The Local Business Center is currently available to business owners in 36 countries, but the dashboard feature will initially be available only for US listings.
For more information about the Local Business Center and the new dashboard, head to the Google Lat Long Blog for a tour. For information on how business owners can help Google users find and connect with their businesses, check out this list of tips.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
10 Comments
It would be awesome if they were working on a way to export this into
an excel document.
We were checking it out yesterday and didn’t see one.
This would be a great tool to work with if we could.
( it’s a really wonderful upgrade don’t get me wrong, I’m just
saying… exporting would be way cool and totally rad!!)
Joan
This is awesome data, but I agree if you have several locations it’s hard to analyze without an export feature.
Also, these new features are not available for locations submitted via bulk upload.
These data are not a professional’s dream data thats for sure. There are a number of things lacking that would be meaningful.
This is certainly a step in the right direction and something I think many of us have been wishing Google would add for quite some time. They could increase my excitement about the dashboard exponentially by showing which keywords lead to a which actions.
@DavidW
Yes it is a step in the right direction but the details in the dashboard are slim. I agree with you on the value of which keywords led to which actions.
In addition to indicating which keywords lead to which actions it would be useful if they also provided information on
* Other (Search queries) – 10 is a very arbitrary number and the value of understanding the long tail would be significant. It would be useful even if in summary or quarterly or annual aggregate form
* A summary of the geo phrases used in order of frequency
* Information as to the locations of the users (again in aggregate or summary form over longer time periods.
In the interview Carter Maslan spoke of the problem with privacy issues. That is a significant issue with these results. But if the information were summarized over longer period or only showed if there enough results as opposed to arbitrarily cutting the data off, it would increase dramatically in value.
[…] Google has been somewhat more forward facing of late. They rolled out the data rich Dashboard accompanied by a strong PR push in the technical, business and mainstream media. They have been […]
Mike:
A quick note. I’ll add it in google groups for maps commentary also. I had added and claimed a record in the lbc for a business. The website wasn’t up. When the dashboard first came out…we had a vision of the dashboard, albeit the data was wierd. We had actions on the lbc record…but no impressions.
The business had been purchased from an older business that had a listing in G Maps (and the lbc) but had never been claimed.
After a while, G Maps no longer was showing our claimed record for the business but rather data from the old business with references back to its web site (the phone number was the same)
We didn’t do anything w/the record until the web site went up.
At that point we no longer had data from the dashboard.
As soon as the website was finished we edited the lbc record with the new url and new email.
BINGO. G maps made an immediate change (could be temporary w/out more work).
Maps started showing the info on our lbc record with correct address, phone number and corrected url.
The dashboard returned.
I suspect dashboard statistics are pulled primarily from google.com vis a vis some algo that co relates a web url with number of times it could appear in conjunction with a showing of maps.
Dave
[…] data rich dashboard for the LBC was rolled out in June of this year in the US. Since that time stats have been missing outside the US since that […]
[…] heard yesterday that the Data Rich Dashboard in the Local Business Center was rolled out in Australia. Today it seems that it has finally made […]
This is certainly a step in the right direction and something I think many of us have been hoping Google would add for a long time. I do think it would be nice if they showed which keyword drove which actions. An export feature would also be nice. But I guess we have to take it one step at a time.
Comments for this post are closed.