Apple Maps Traffic in Google Analytics

[Marissa]

Is there a way to track how many people see or use a business's Apple Maps listing? It doesn't look like Apple allows you to add a UTM to your website URL. Is there another way to track this?

 

[JoyHawkins]

An incredibly smart individual sent me the following tip but asked to remain anonymous. They recommended using a different URL than you use anywhere else but that still opens the location page information. You'd want to make it a URL that has a canonical tag to the real URL. Also, stay away from UTM codes as those aren't allowed on Apple.

 

[genteinvencible]

No parameters, no party, I guess.

 

[genteinvencible]

You mean a shortened URL?

Makes sense... you can track the bitly clicks.

If not, it would be possible to do something with Tag Manager...

 

[JoyHawkins]

No, I mean an actual URL on the business website that looks like the real location page. I don't think they would accept a bitly.

 

[Tiggerito]

You could see if hashed URLs or other parameters are allowed. e.g. https://example.com/local-page#AppleMaps or https://example.com/local-page?from=AppleMaps

I do that, then use some JavaScript to rewrite the address to utm parameters before GA has a look at it. I then remove the utm parameters so they don't get spread around.

Or have your own little redirect. https://example.com/local-page-from-apple -> https://example.com/local-page?_utm...=...

 

[Justin Mosebach]

An incredibly smart individual sent me the following tip but asked to remain anonymous. They recommended using a different URL than you use anywhere else but that still opens the location page information. You'd want to make it a URL that has a canonical tag to the real URL. Also, stay away from UTM codes as those aren't allowed on Apple.

In addition to the canonical, you could try noindexing the page. Google doesn't always follow the canonical, but typically respects noindex.

 

[kathleen.rhodes]

No, I mean an actual URL on the business website that looks like the real location page. I don't think they would accept a bitly.

I'm perhaps not getting this, but could you do a page that redirects to the home page?

 

[pony]

I'm perhaps not getting this, but could you do a page that redirects to the home page?

GA isn't great at catching the traffic to the initial URL, so this will just look like traffic to your homepage, leaving you with the same problem you began with.

The reason of using a unique page is so that when you see visits to that page in GA, you know they came from Apple Maps and no where else.

Joy suggested creating a 'duplicate' of the page on it's own unique URL that cannot be accessed anywhere else, with a canonical tag back to the original page.

 

[AndySimpson]

For those of you that do track from Apple Maps using this/similar method, what kind of traffic do you typically see. I know this will give me the "it depends" answer but interested to see if this is worth a little bit of time and effort. Thank you

 

[j_holtslander]

This experiment seems to be working for this 4 location firm...

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Whoa, that's really clever @j_holtslander! I'm surprised Apple hasn't dinged it for being a redirected URL.

 

[j_holtslander]

I'm surprised Apple hasn't dinged it for being a redirected URL.

Been about 2 months now since the change was made.

 

[AndySimpson]

This experiment seems to be working for this 4 location firm...

Excellent, how long have you been running this Jay?

 

[j_holtslander]

Excellent, how long have you been running this Jay?

About 2 months. Perhaps 2.5.

The fact that it's working and not dinged by Apple *might* have something to do with the fact that I used 308 redirects as opposed to 301s and maybe Apple's systems haven't been set to watch for 308s?

 

[AndySimpson]

I like it! Thanks for the share Jay, going to apply on a few "test" clients

 

[Tiggerito]

FYI.

If you also want to track GMB traffic in the GSC, you will probably find utm parameters (or any parameters) will not work. GSC now canonicalises the URLs in its reports, which means it is most likely that the utm parameter URLs will be canonicalised to the base URL.

 

[pony]

FYI.

If you also want to track GMB traffic in the GSC, you will probably find utm parameters (or any parameters) will not work. GSC now canonicalises the URLs in its reports, which means it is most likely that the utm parameter URLs will be canonicalised to the base URL.

I'm not using UTM parameters, but do use a query param in my GMB links and I can see them to this day in GSC as separate pages.

 

[Tiggerito]

I'm not using UTM parameters, but do use a query param in my GMB links and I can see them to this day in GSC as separate pages.

Do your pages contain canonical tags?

Here's Google's announcement of the shift to reporting via canonicals. It indicates the reporting is based on Google's own choice of what is the canonical.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/02/consolidating-your-website-traffic-on.html
GMB is its own thing in search results. The URLs it uses don't have to be in the index. Maybe their system does not do the canonicalisation for those entries as it may not have the data to work out the canonical.

 

[pony]

GMB is its own thing in search results. The URLs it uses don't have to be in the index. Maybe their system does not do the canonicalisation for those entries as it may not have the data to work out the canonical.

This seems to be the case actually, although I am not positive. The pages with and without the query param both canonicalize back to the page without the params yet I still see both in the pages tab of the performance report in GSC.