Tracking Google Local Business Marketing Results

As mentioned here last week, marketing a small or medium sized business through the local search results is an effective and smart way to generate new leads and sales to your business.  As a local business owner getting your web site into the local business results on Google, also know as the 10-pack, can bring substantial new business for no direct cost.

In the past, once you had set up your local search listing on Google there was not a whole lot of visibility into how exactly those local search listings were benefiting you, other than corollary data in Google Analytics and the perceived increase in web based inquiries coming via phone calls, emails, or inquiry for submissions.

About two months ago, Google opened up Local Business Center reports, which give local business owners a detailed look into what is going on with their local search listings. These listings not only show small businesses marketers what they have done well, but also can show areas for improvement in their local business listing.

Let’s take a look at what’s included in the Google Local Business Center reports.
Activity Report

Google Local Business Activity Report

In the Activity Report we can see a number of important data points:

• Impressions and Actions Graph – these graphs provide a good visual representation of the impressions and activity driven by your local business listing on Google.  This can serve as a good place to spot trends in your listing’s activity and look for areas to improve.
• Impressions – this shows the number of times people saw your listing as a part of the local business results.  Every impression really represents and opportunity for you to get a customer to click on your local listing.
• Actions – this section of the report shows you how many of your potential customer impressions turned into an action for you.  The report shows clicks for more information, which means they look at your full business listing.  The next number shows the number of people who clicked for driving directions, a good sign that you may get a walk in customer from your local business listing.  Finally you can see the number of people who clicked on your web site, showing that the visitor is looking for more information.

Top Search Queries Report

Google Local Business Top Search Queries Report

The top search queries report is a great way to see what keywords are triggering your listing in the Google local results.  This is extremely helpful as it will help you see if your local business listing is optimized for the right keywords.  If you see that you are showing up for terms that are not a good match for your business, or you are not showing up for big terms that you think you should, you might want to go back and change up the keywords in you business listing.

Driving Directions Report

Google Local Business Driving Directions Report

For small, medium and large local businesses that rely on walk-in business, the driving directions report gives you an idea of where people are located when they are looking for directions to your business.  Aside from being a neat way of finding out where your customers are coming from, this also give you an idea of which geographic regions are seeing your listings.

Based off of the data in the image above, you can see that the primary cities where this listing is being displayed are Denver, Englewood and Aurora, Colorado.  If this business wanted to get traffic from another location, such as Boulder, it might be a good idea to add the city name Boulder to the business’s listing.

Conclusion

Regularly looking at your Google local business statistics is a smart way to get detailed information on how much and what type of business you are getting from your local listing.  Scanning the reports can show you your successes and also point out areas for improvement in your local search marketing efforts.  If you haven’t done it already, place a reminder on your calendar to review your local business listings statistics at least once a month – doing so could help you boost your leads, prospects and sales without any direct marketing cost.