Google Introduces Business Location Insights in GMB API Update

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Google has released the ability to pull Google My Business Insights from the GMB API. This is part of the GMB API 3.2 release, and was officially announced this week.

Making these performance metrics available has been a high-priority item for the GMB Product team, dating back to at least 2015. That’s when Location3 was chosen as one of the five trusted API testers of the initial Google My Business API release. That head start has given our skilled technology team the ability to provide aggregate insights to our clients for more than a year now. Here are how those aggregate metrics break out and how Location3 has been incorporating them into our proprietary LocalAct platform, which is available for brands and partners.

Metrics available include searches, views and actions in these reports as categorized by Google:

Where customers found you on Google

Views on Maps: How many customers found your business on Google Maps.

Views on Search: How many customers found your business on Google Search.

Viewed Photos

How many times your photos were viewed by customers

Customer actions

These metrics can be further broken down to see number of clicks by day of week.

Visits to Website: How many customers visited your website.

Clicks to Phone: How many customers called your business.

Clicks for Driving Directions: How many customers requested driving directions to your business.

How customers find your listing

Direct queries: How many customers searched for your business name or address directly.

Discover queries: How many customers searched for a category, product, or service that you offer, and your listing appeared.

Driving Directions Requests

This report provides the top 10 places from which customers request driving directions to your business location.

Effects

This is an exciting development for a few reasons. First, it improves our developer processes, allowing for more intensive analysis on complementary data sets. Metrics from similar features, such as Facebook Insights, allow us to provide clients with data that ties together online and offline marketing efforts. For example, if we see a significant increase in Facebook location check-ins during a holiday TV promotion, we’re able to establish a correlation with store visits and phone calls from Google search users during that promotion.

Second, using these insights, we’re able to determine the value of a client’s Google listing. By taking an average purchase price for the locations and factoring in Google in-store conversion data, we can establish a simple ROI.

These metrics can be further analyzed in conjunction with location-page data from local-store pages and hyper-local paid media, giving brands a clear picture of what’s moving the needle for store-level conversions.

It’s important to note that Location3 engineering has been incorporating these metrics into our reporting since the GMB API pilot program was released in 2015. It’s allowed our technology team to work in tandem with our account management team to establish a greater understanding of how local listing management impacts and intersects with the user journey, and how that can produce real results for the brands we work with.

To learn more, read our full press release on this exciting news!

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