Insights Reports - Do you trust the accuracy?

[Prominent]

I would like to know what everyone's experience is with Insights reports and whether they seem accurate for your business or clients?

I currently have an issue with a client who has 3 stores and a GMB listing for each of them. 2 of the GMB listings are reporting weak viewer numbers for map searches on the weekends and the other 1 shows strong numbers on the weekend. The issue is that Adwords and Analytics statistics show that the weekends are always the strongest for search, so realistically all 3 GMB listings should be reporting stronger numbers on the weekends, not just one of them.

I have contacted the GMB team about this and they were of zero help and would not escalate the matter.

My client is asking questions and I've got no answers.

 

[Brian Barwig]

I rarely look at the insights for Maps/Searches. I'm not certain how that would help your clients anyway or why they want to be looking at those numbers. I'm more interested in driving leads/revenue to my clients.

I tend to focus more on the website visits and calls, simply because I can somewhat verify those numbers. I track calls with a Tracking Number and track website clicks with a UTM code. If you do this, you can analyze what the GMB Insights tell you compared to what your tracking systems say. Much of the time, GMB is under-reporting both numbers from anywhere between 50-400% from what I have seen. I imagine something similar is happening with the Maps/Searches insights.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Brian nailed it. We do the same thing with UTM codes and tracking numbers.

The other thing to consider is that the definitions of the various GMB insights are nuanced. This recent post about the "Branded" queries is a good example of that - How are Google My Business Branded Searches Defined? | Local Search Forum

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Here's a thread about adding UTM codes as well: GMB Posts UTM Codes | Local Search Forum

 

[JoyHawkins]

Views are the most useless metric since they don't represent actual searches but are more like impressions on a banner ad campaign (any time your listing was visible anywhere it counts). Even if someone is browsing on Google Maps and your name shows up as a dot, it counts.

 

[Brian Barwig]

I agree with Joy. I'd also bet that any non-Google crawlers pinging the SERP (rank checkers - GetStat, Moz, SEMrush, etc.) are also skewing the views.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Yeah, that happened to me a while ago when checking Search Console.. was wondering why a batch of keyword phrases had about 30 impressions every month, until I realized it was the rank tracker scanning once a day.

 

[mborgelt]

Brian nailed it. I think too often clients can get caught up in the minutiae and in a sense of service it's quite easy to jump right in with them. With nuances like the one Joy pointed out, you are better off using conversions and leads as KPIs and use GMB an analysis tool when things start to drop.

 

[Tim Colling]

I agree with the above comments. We look mostly at calls using CTNs (different numbers for GMBs and for the websites) and we look at GA for website visitor trends. We also track rankings using Bright Local.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Prominent, what Brian said.

"Insights" are mostly noise. You can't really do anything with them, or analyze them much. You can't compare numbers YoY, and of course Google won't show you which specific search terms you're getting more visible vs. less visible for.

They have a nifty little arrow that points up if you get more views than you did last month. That's where the usefulness of "Insights" begins and ends, at least for me.

 

[JoyHawkins]

You can get YOY numbers if you connect to Data Studio but the connector we use (SuperMetrics) does have a cost.

 

[Prominent]

Thank you for the great replies. I was unaware that you could track website/post clicks using UTM codes, so this is gold.

 

[Prominent]

I have another question.

I'm wondering if the UTM code I added to 'Website' would track the clicks from Google maps as well as Google search?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I'm wondering if the UTM code I added to 'Website' would track the clicks from Google maps as well as Google search?

Those would trigger on the Knowledge Panel, 3-pack, and on Maps.