Insights give you an inside look at how people find your business listing on the web. Because many customers find businesses on Google Search and Maps, Insights focuses on how customers use Search and Maps to find your listing, and what they do once they find it. You can get Insights for individual listings or in bulk.
Tip: Your data for the last few days may be slightly adjusted as we evaluate and refine its accuracy.
How it works
Insights data includes views, searches, and actions from both organic search results and Google Ads. Google Insights provides you different ways to understand how customers interact with your listing:
How customers find your Business Profile
This section of Insights shows how many customers found you and how they found you. Click or tap the chart on the dashboard to see the percentage of all customers that found you via each of these methods:
- Direct searches: A customer directly searched for your business name or address.
- Discovery searches: A customer searched for a category, product, or service that you offer, and your listing appeared.
- Branded searches: A customer searched for your brand or a brand related to your business. This category will only appear if your listing has appeared at least once for a branded search.
- Total searches: The total number of direct, discovery, and branded searches.
Want to catch the eyes of people who haven't discovered your business yet? Try running an ad on Google.
Tip: This graph shows you the number of people who searched for your business by name or by category. These searches are calculated individually, so if a user did a discovery search and then a direct search, we would count these as 2 searches (or one in each section).
Search queries
Starting November 2020, we're moving Search Queries to performance reporting on Search. We expect this move to be complete for all users in January 2021.
Learn how to improve your local ranking on Google.
Where customers find you on Google
This section of Insights shows how many customers found you via Google Search or Google Maps. You’ll see the number of views your listing received through each of these services:
- View on Search: A customer found your business via Google Search. Displays as “Search views” on bulk reports.
- Views on Maps: A customer found your business via Google Maps. Displays as “Maps views” on bulk reports.
- Total views: The total views of both Google Search and Google Maps.
To view details on how many customers found your business on a specific product and day:
- Select the day you’re interested in.
- Desktop: Place your cursor over the day.
- Mobile: Tap on the day.
- To the right of the graph, click the checkboxes to turn on and off filters.
Tip: This represents views of your business in various sections on Search and Maps. We will display the total number of views, if the same user viewed your business both on Search and on Maps, we will display 2 views.
Customer actions
This section shows how customers behave after they found your listing on Google. The graph shows how many customers completed the following types of actions when viewing your listing:
- Visit your website: A customer views your website. Displays as “Website actions” on bulk reports.
- Request directions: A customer requests directions to your business. Displays as “Directions actions” on bulk reports.
- Call you: A customer calls your business. Displays as “Phone call actions” on bulk reports.
- Total actions: The total customer actions for website, directions, and phone.
To view how many customers completed an action on a specific day:
- Select the day you’re interested in.
- Desktop: Place your cursor over the day.
- Mobile: Tap on the day.
- To the right of the graph, click checkboxes to turn on and off filters.
Tip: This graph displays the total number of times anyone clicked one of the actions (e.g. "request directions"). This means that a single user can request directions to a business 100 times in a single day, and we would record 100 requests.
Direction requests
This section shows where customers are when they request directions to your business.
On the map displayed, you’ll see your location pinned and the popular places you customers are when they ask Google Maps for directions to your address. The total number of requests broken down by city or neighborhood are displayed as well.
You can zoom in and out on the map using the controls in the bottom-right corner.
Tip: This graph displays the number of unique users in each source location (i.e. postcode, city, and country). This means that a single user can request directions to a business 100 times in the time period, but we would only record one request.
Phone calls
This section displays when and how often customers called your business through your business listing.
In the Total calls graph, you can view trends of customer phone calls by Day of week or Time of day. You can use this information to see when customers call the most.
The dropdown menu in the top-right corner lets you adjust the time-frame to see data from the last week, month, or quarter.
Tip: This represents the number of clicks on the call button on your business profile. If the user copies the number and dials it manually or ends the call before it connects, you may see discrepancies between number of Phone Calls on the Insights page and number of actual calls your business receives.
Photos
This section displays the number of photos associated with your listing and how often they’re viewed compared to similar businesses in the following graphs:
- Photo views: How many times your photos have been viewed.
- Photo quantity: How many photos you’ve uploaded to your business listing.
The dropdown menu in the top-left corner lets you adjust the time-frame to see data from the last week, month, or quarter. Hovering over a specific day on the graph shows you data for that day only.
If there are enough businesses in the area similar to yours, there are lines on the graphs that compare your photo data with photo data to the similar businesses. For example, if you manage a restaurant, your business would be compared to other restaurants in your area. On the right side of the graph you’ll see the total number of photos based on the data points you’ve selected.
These sections have the following labels in bulk Insights reports:
- Total owner photos
- Owner photo views
- Total customer photos
- Customer photo views
Tip: This represents views of all your photos. If the same user views multiple photos, we will record multiple views.
What your business is known for
This section of Insights provides customers' opinions of your restaurant or cafe (e.g. cozy, romantic, or notable cocktails).
Since customers' opinions are based on their experience, the information is subjective. It's considered to be valuable to other customers, as it describes the feel & ambiance for a place. Unless proven false, we won’t remove this information.
