Tracking click throughs from Google local SERP listing by adding UTM tag in site URL

[leves]

Ive been trying for a while now to track our visits from our google local search listing.

I have a feeling that the data in Google My Business is not super accurate.

And when ive tried google analytics reports ive never been able to get them to work.

What i was thinking of doing instead was adding a UTM tracking tag to the URL i use in my local profile and tracking clicks that way.

Has any one tried that and :
- a) does it work
- b) is there a negative effect on your ranking from adding it
- c) does changing your URL to a subpage eg. not homepage (regardless of if you include a UTM tag), negatively effect your ranking

 

[heckler]

A It works.
B Nope.
C Potentially.

 

[leves]

Thanks is adding a UTM tag the go to method for this, or should i try something else first ?

 

[James Watt]

UTMs are the way to go, you're on the right track. Dan Leibson wrote a little mini guide on the topic last year you can check out to make sure you don't forget anything important, but it's pretty straight forward.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi leves,

Re C) As Heckler said - it depends.

But in general, the organic ranking has a big impact on the pack ranking. Typically the homepage is best to us,e since it usually has the most juice and natural links - therefore is easiest to rank. An exception of course would be a multi-location business, with more than 2 locations. In that case you would typically want each page to link to a location page that's optimized to rank well for each location.

 

[garyjmag]

Is anyone noticing GMB reverting these tracking URLs with UTM parameters to the base URL with # and a string of random characters after it? Noticing this happen on more and more of my pages and even after changing it back to the tracking URL, seeing them eventually go back to this random http://clientsite.com/#9828328

 

[FriarTuck00]

We have been adding the UTMs to links for our clients GMB listings for about 4 months now and we have not seen any negative impacts. We've also been able to report clicks to the site from that link as it now shows up as a campaign in Google Analytics. For now, this is part of our standard setup procedures.

 

[garyjmag]

Agreed and its definitely part of my standard process as well, but I'm noticing these change randomly after the fact. Not all of them have changed, but I've caught about 4 in the last two weeks, one of which has reverted back to the weird hash URL again. Thinking I'm going to have a to do a full portfolio audit, but was just wondering if anyone has seen this happening or know of why its happening.