Phone Calls Now Being Tracked by Google My Business Insights

[Linda Buquet]

I just got some cool news from Owen Kane on Google+. Google just quietly did a very nice update to Google My Business Insights.

Owen wrote: Looks Like Google is now tracking number of Phone Calls made to a Business phone number in GMB

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I've seen a few reports of Insights stalls and glitches this week.
Maybe because she was trying to birth this new update?

Well this will give SMBs more reasons to log in and check their listings.

And will give consultants a really powerful way to track and work on improving conversions AND an important new metric to report on.

Kudos to the team! Nice addition!

I checked my dashboard and I have it.
Are you seeing it yet?

What do you think???
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[Phil Rozek]

Dang! Nice catch, Owen, and thanks for the scoop, Linda.

I am seeing "Phone calls" in my dashboard.

It's certainly better than nothing. The only trouble is that it favors businesses that people tend to search for on their phones - restaurants, shops, etc. - because Google's just tracking clicks-to-call. Not that there's much Google can do about that, but my point is that the data won't be meaningful for every business.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes Phil that's true to a large degree, but with more and more on mobile, more of the time, it will still factor in and be meaningful for more businesses over time I think.

 

[cdawg2610]

Dang! Nice catch, Owen, and thanks for the scoop, Linda.

I am seeing "Phone calls" in my dashboard.

It's certainly better than nothing. The only trouble is that it favors businesses that people tend to search for on their phones - restaurants, shops, etc. - because Google's just tracking clicks-to-call. Not that there's much Google can do about that, but my point is that the data won't be meaningful for every business.

Dude this is awesome! Phil - its tracking the clicks to call from mobile searches?

 

[Phil Rozek]

Dude this is awesome! Phil - its tracking the clicks to call from mobile searches?

Must be. There's no other way for Google to track those calls.

 

[cdawg2610]

Must be. There's no other way for Google to track those calls.

that's what I was thinking too (though its one of those days where I just need to make sure someone else is on that page with me )

 

[Linda Buquet]

I just commented to Dan Leibson on G+ and said...

The biggest thing for me is just that this spells P R O G R E S S!

Every new feature they add shows they are working to make things better. I mean I know a lot of things they are working on behind the scenes, but once you see them go live, it just further proves their commitment to local, which I'm always thankful for!

 

[Laustin1878]

I agree with your sentiments Linda. Progress is good. This added info is certainly a step forward especially since insights in the past have been less than reliable in terms of tracking success.

What at other teasers do you have up your sleeve Linda? ;-)

 

[bczubiak]

It will be interesting to compare G+ click-to-calls to click-to-calls on our mobile websites.

 

[steven]

And will give consultants a really powerful way to track and work on improving conversions AND an important new metric to report on.

Very true, Linda. And yes, I'm seeing it in my dashboard. I do notice under "clicks" that it shows a new options for calls, but it shows zero even though in the "phone calls" section there is data. But given time, it sounds like that will sort itself out.

It will be interesting to compare G+ click-to-calls to click-to-calls on our mobile websites.

Yes it will. I track clicks on my client's mobile sites and this data from the GMB dashboard is more data I can bring to them.

Progress, indeed, Linda! Wondering what's coming next...

 

[jackson_lo]

Fantastic add-on by the Google Local team! Always wondered when this day would come when they start reporting organic phone calls from mobile SERPs. Be good if they would provide more info on what kind of calls are being filtered and which are reported.

It will be interesting to compare G+ click-to-calls to click-to-calls on our mobile websites.

Thanks for this blog post idea

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here are some hard details from Jennifer Slegg who no doubt got them directly from Google. Colan asked Google for more details last night but we have not heard back yet.

<a href="http://www.thesempost.com/google-tracking-number-phone-calls-made-via-google-business/">Google Tracking Number of Phone Calls Made via Google My Business </a>
(Just a snippet - so click the link to read full post.)

Google is getting the data by tracking clicks made on the phone number, so businesses that tend to be searched for more frequently from a smart phone, such as a restaurant for example, would get more data as it is convenient to click-to-phone a number on mobile. But for desktop, unless they are using something like Skype, the calls wouldn’t be tracked.

You must have had at least one call via Google My Business in the last 12 weeks in order to see the data in the GMB dashboard.

And for the conspiracy theorists, no Google isn’t tracking phone calls via phone carriers. They are simply tracking the clicks on the phone number in the Google My Business listing, similarly to how it tracks clicks on AdWords ads and organic search results.

Thanks for the insights Jenn. (Pun intended!)

 

[Dialady]

Great new data point to promote to SMB's. Also will help demonstrate the use of mobile when they are in doubt. Great info. Thanks!!

Theresa

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hmmm weird.

We brought it up to Google today and requested more details and now suddenly phone calls option is gone in my dash.

Do you guys that saw the option yesterday, still have it???

 

[steven]

Still have phone calls box, and the phone calls within the clicks box.

 

[Linda Buquet]

and the phone calls within the clicks box.

??? Is that last part you mentioned different from what I show in screenshot above?
If so can you share a screenshot?

I'm hearing from lots of people, that like me can no longer see the call box.
But others do.

And then there is Colan. When he hits refresh it comes and goes.

 

[jackson_lo]

I noticed that when you expand the Clicks section, it already breaks out the clicks to website and phone calls. Now, in this example it shows that there were 64 phone calls, but below I added them up and it 181. One is last 30 days, the other is last 4 weeks (not much of a difference in terms of # days). Any thoughts?

 

[curiouslyjade]

Nice catch! We're constantly testing out new features for Google My Business. This one hasn't officially launched yet, but we'll share new feature updates when they become more permanently available in the dashboard.

- Jade Wang, Google My Business Community Manager

 

[steven]

Yes, like Jackson's screen shot. Same in mine. And no, they don't add up yet, but I know these things are working in the background and they'll fix it eventually...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Nice catch! We're constantly testing out new features for Google My Business. This one hasn't officially launched yet, but we'll share new feature updates when they become more permanently available in the dashboard.

- Jade Wang, Google My Business Community Manager

Thanks for posting Jade. I started to get the feeling this was maybe not quite launched yet.

But as you can tell, it's creating a stir and folks love it - so bring it on.

We can't wait to see what else the team has in store for us!

Jackson - thanks for the screenshots! No one else has posted that view with the calls in with the clicks.