UTM's in urls for GMB?

[barry]

Hi All,

I've recently seen a few cases where I clicked through to a website from a local pack listing on Google, and noticed that the url of the site included a utm, which would help identify traffic which comes specifically from the local pack. Is this a recommended practice? Is there any reason not to do it?

 

[fabaziou]

Take a look at Dan's post on Local SEO Guide.
I have been using tracking codes on GMB for some time now and have yet to see a negative impact. Just make sure you have canonicals in place as the article mentions:

Seriously, Track Your Google My Business Pages

 

[mark_scheets]

I've actually been doing this for a while in with my GMB listings and it has helped a lot due to the fact that my agency puts such a heavy emphasis on GMB listings.

I actually wrote a blog post about it. It's a much more in depth piece than what Dan at Local SEO Guide did.

Google My Business Tracking

 

[barry]

Thanks for your response.

Do you think that adding utms would create any type of citation consistency problems (with pre-existing local citations), since the website urls on those citations would not be exactly the same as the gmb url?

 

[James Watt]

No, even having subtle variations in the actual core information for your business (Name, address and phone number) aren't necessarily going to be seen by Google as actual differences. I haven't seen a study testing this out one way or the other, but I think it's safe to assume Google can read between the lines with URL destinations, especially when you properly set up canonicals.

 

[Robin]

Hi Guys,

When I compare GMB Insights with Google Analytics (I've used custom urls like described in the post by Dan), the numbers are really far off for some of my clients, >70% in some cases). Does anyone know if there is a difference in counting website clicks or something?

 

[James Watt]

GMB Insights never even comes close to matching. Of the two, Analytics seems to be far more trustworthy. I use Insights as a trends guide, but the actual numbers themselves I take with a whole spoonful of salt. That's another reason why I value anything to make the Analytics numbers easier to segment and analyze.

 

[Robin]

Thanks for your reply James!

Do you think the click-to-calls in the GMB-Insights are more accurate? And the click-to-route (might be off when more that 1 business is in the same location?)?

 

[James Watt]

I believe that the directions metric can still be off for businesses sharing an address, but I'm not actually sure. Someone else will have to weigh in on the click to call numbers.

 

[dogrescueguy]

I use UTM's in two of my car dealership GMB listings and love seeing these stats in GA.

However, on one of the listings the UTM gets stripped out about every 6 months and I have to put it back in, actually just happened again last month.

Any idea why or how the UTM would get removed?

 

[heckler]

Any idea why or how the UTM would get removed?

It's likely Google just updating data with what it knows about the business.

 

[allieglas20]

I have asked Google about these discrepancies and they say that they cannot control where the link is being used (if someone uses the link from GMB with the UTM code somewhere else and traffic is coming from that link). I do use UTMs for all of my clients though because I like being able to have the information for longer than 90 days (without manually using a spreadsheet and implementing all of the data myself).

 

[DanLeibson]

All Google data should be taken with a grain of salt...

How do you deal with local SEO KPIs that don't pass the smell test?