Google My Business & the Business’ Website Works Together

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Google My Business & the Business’ Website Works Together

We’ve talked with you quite a bit about Google My Business over the last few months. As you may recall, just a few weeks ago we shared how changes are coming to Google Maps that were announced at Google I/O.

We follow what’s happening in local SEO and Google My Business (GMB) specifically because this so dramatically impacts you, our agency and local marketing partners. This week we’d like to highlight an agency partner that is accomplishing quite a bit by utilizing Google My Business for their clients. We’ve been following this agency partner – and specifically one of their client’s listings – to see how it’s been performing since March 9.

Optimizing a Google My Business Listing Increases Search and Maps Views

Back in March we discussed the value of optimizing a Google My Business listing, and shared screenshots showing that once the partner added products and services to their client’s GMB listing, the search and map views started to spike.

A screenshot from March to April compared how the client’s GMB listing went from getting 2.76K views to getting 6.18K views in search and map views. A screenshot taken this week reports 12.2K combined views in search and maps.

How Customers Search Within a GMB Listing Can Be Revealing

In April we discussed Google My Business with you and its place in local search. This post was a follow-up to the March article. At that time, we looked at the How Customers Search for Your Business data from GMB insights.

In March, their client’s GMB listing was reporting 2,479 searches in a quarter (3-month timeframe). In April they received 2,912 searches in a month (30-day timeframe). This week’s screenshot revealed this is maintaining, and is currently at approximately 3,145 searches in a given month.

The detailed breakdown on this data is 713 Direct Searches (22.7%), 2,423 Discovery Searches (77%) and 9 Branded Searches (0.3%).

To understand the difference between Direct, Discovery and Branded searches you can look to Google My Business Help. Google explains these as:

Direct searches: A customer directly searched for your business name or address.
Discovery searches: A customer searched for a category, product, or service that you offer, and your listing appeared.
Branded searches: A customer searched for your brand or a brand related to your business. This category will only appear if your listing has appeared at least once for a branded search.
Total searches: The total number of direct, discovery, and branded searches.

Customer Actions Taken on a Google My Business Listing Can Be Tracked

Today, we’d like to take this a step further and look into Customer Actions taken on this client’s Google My Business listing. While we don’t have screenshots from the previous periods, this week we captured a quarter view.

gmb customer actions taken

As you can see for this reporting period, prior to March 19 this GMB listing was getting less than 10 total actions taken daily from the GMB listing. For background, our agency partner started publishing GMB posts to this listing on March 24. Prior to that time, no GMB posts had been published on the listing. The partner published a second GMB post on April 5. Once the partner started publishing GMB posts, the Customer Actions started increasing.

On April 19 the partner increased to publishing a GMB post every week. The actions taken on the GMB listing started increasing even more. So instead of getting 10 total actions a day, now the business is getting upwards of 35 total daily actions. We realize that 35 total daily actions might not seem like a lot compared to other listings, but we can tell you this – it’s a significant number for this industry, especially when we compare it to other GMB listings for a local business (in the same industry) in a smaller city.

On March 14 this agency partner launched a new website for this client, and along with that they set up Google Analytics Goal Tracking and put UTMS on all the links on the GMB listing. We can report that they have had 1,880 sessions on the website occur from clicks on the Google My Business listing – along with 99 goal completions, which for this website is either a form fill or a click-to-call. So, if you’re still wondering if Google My Business is important or if your local business clients need a website – well, we can confirm both with a powerful yes.

Google My Business Adds Services by Scraping the Business’ Website

Have you looked at your clients’ Google My Business listings lately in the GMB dashboard? Have you noticed extra services being added to the business’ GMB listing that you didn’t add? These services are pulling from the business’ website.

Google is looking at your clients’ websites to confirm the services listed on their website match the GMB listing, and when they don’t, they will remove those services – and in some cases add additional services to the GMB listing. It’s important to monitor your clients’ Google My Business listings on an ongoing basis – we’ve said this before and we will continue to share this truth.

This includes taking the following actions:

Monitoring reviews and responding to them
Adding Questions & Answers
Uploading EXIF-data optimized images
Publishing Google My Business Posts