Google My Business Insights: Visibility. Engagement. Audience.

[Linda Buquet]

Wanted to share this post that was just published by Jade from Google.
Just basic overview of Insights and the data that you can view.

<a href="http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com/2014/08/see-metrics-that-matter-for-your.html">See the metrics that matter for your business</a>

Unfortunately, the most important data was removed. The keyword volume data.

 

[Dave]

Wanted to share this post that was just published by Jade from Google.
Just basic overview of Insights and the data that you can view.

See the metrics that matter for your business

Unfortunately, the most important data was removed. The keyword volume data.

Yeah, Linda. I think the data that comes from the Local dashboard, or what's now called My Business has always been inconsistent and lousy.

I reviewed some of that data post pigeon and I don't think its good. My gut is that it understated clicks on the PAC against our real traffic and it vastly overstated impressions....using a radius that is WAAAAAAAYYYY to huge.

I think analytics data is generally better...and we have come to rely and generally trust in adwords impressions data....and we've been scrutinizing it for about 9 years.

And then on top of all that, they don't give keywords.

Its crummy data, always has been. But its part of google's direct sales campaign to all the smb's they sign up.

 

[cdawg2610]

While I still miss the keyword data, I am glad they added back the driving directions to insights (which could have happened awhile ago but I gave up looking in there)

 

[Dave]

Wanted to share this post that was just published by Jade from Google.
Just basic overview of Insights and the data that you can view.

See the metrics that matter for your business

Unfortunately, the most important data was removed. The keyword volume data.

There are a couple of reasons I distrust the metrics from the dashboard. Read the explanations on insights or clicks: https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911773?p=insights_overview&hl=en&authuser=0&rd=1

Right up front they tell you the numbers are approximations. Google is simply delivering data it wishes to deliver and not necessarily accurate information.

This is different from adwords. They dont' warn you that way. Adwords better be accurate or close to it. Otherwise Google is going to get sued by millions of customers.

Its more or less why I trust adwords impressions more than that from the dashboard.

BTW: I did a post pigeon analysis for one of our smb's similar to what Mike did for his client, Barbara Oliver. While I liked what Mike did by comparing city to city clicks to the website I disagreed with putting any value or reliance on the "impressions" data from the dashboard.

For our smb, I checked impressions from the dashboard and impressions from adwords. I checked total google traffic and also google plus direct traffic as I'm still convinced too much direct traffic is actually search traffic (mostly from google of course).

For our smb I thought the My Business Dashboard data was misleading against the actual traffic to the website (I can and did confirm traffic by a 2nd analytics tool) and against traffic from adwords. I think the dashboard impressions data can be very misleading. I'll cite examples if you like. They come from a lot of years of analysis and some interaction with the places forum to "affect" dashboard data.

What I picked up from the dashboard was essentially that it suggested probably too few clicks on clicks to the smb in various PAC's and way way too many impressions.

Of course the dashboard has eliminated keywords...one more limiting controlling factor.

I simply would never suggest one rely on dashboard stats. I'd suggest they have always been purposefully terrible.