How to track and analyze traffic from a Google business profile to a website?
What happens to users who hit your company's Google business profile (Google My Business) in search results and decide to go to the site? Do they buy more often? Do they call less often? Do they call more often or less often? Do they send submission forms from the site or not?
This question runs through various forums very often, and we decided to answer it.
However, there is one effortless way to analyze direct traffic from Google business profile and see what users do after they hit your website and how they differ from those users who hit the site from, for example, Google Ads.
This way is Google's special UTM. This article will teach you how to create and use it in Google's business profile SEO.
Google UTM - What is it?
Google's UTM, or Urchin Tracking Module, is a set of parameters added to URL links to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in both Google Analytics and Google Search Console. UTM helps identify the traffic source to a website, allowing you to analyze which marketing campaigns, communication channels, or specific content are producing the best results.
UTM parameters are:
1. utm_source - identifies the traffic source, e.g., google, Facebook, newsletter
2. utm_medium - indicates the type of medium, e.g., email, social, organic, paid
3. utm_campaign - specific name of the campaign, e.g. promotion_spring, black_friday
Example URL of a page without UTM:
Example URL of a page with UTM:
https://localo.com/?utm_source=localo&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=google_utm_post
Adding every UTM parameter to links allows you to understand better how users get to your site and monitor the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaign. As a result, you can better adjust your marketing strategy and focus on what brings the best results.
How do you implement such a tracking code to your Google business profile?
I'm about to show you how you can easily, quickly, and implement this into your business profile on Google and Google Maps, and then how to track and monitor this traffic in Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
1. Open your company's profile on Google
First, type "my business" into Google to open your company's profile from Google Search.
2. Go to edit your company profile
3. Click the section with the website
4. Add this code without " to the URL and click the "save" button
"?utm_source=search_google&utm_medium=profile_company_google&utm_campaign=button_page"
And there you go!
Google Analytics - How to track traffic from a Google business profile to a website?
Below we instruct you how to verify traffic from Google business profiles on your website and measure parameters such as:
- Session duration - How long do users stay on the website
- Bounce rate - How many users quickly leave the website and choose not to read the content
- Page per session number - How many pages, on average, does a user view during one session
- Conversions (If you have them implemented on the site, which a specialist usually does) - include the number of clicks on the phone button, the number of quote request forms sent, the number of passes to the contact tab, etc.
1. Open Google Analytics
Go to https://analytics.google.com/ and sign in to a valid Google account (you can do it in the upper right corner) and select the appropriate domain in the Google dashboard (you can do it in the upper left corner).
If you don't have Google Analytics, find out how to set it up and integrate it into your website or have a programmer do it for you.
2. Go into specific sections
3. Set the appropriate filters
Now, you must click the "+" icon and click "campaign - session".
4. Done!
Great! You have just performed the first analysis of your business profile in Google Analytics. Now you can see how many events users perform in one session, what the engagement rate looks like, how many users there were, etc.
5. Explore the entire menu
This is just one of many analyses of your Google company profile in Google Analytics. Explore the entire menu :)
You can learn more about exploring Google Analytics from dedicated videos on YouTube, for example.
Google Search Console - How to track traffic from a Google business profile to a website?
1. Open Google Search Console
Go to https://search.google.com/search-console and log in to a valid Google account (you can do it in the upper right corner) and select the appropriate domain (you can do it in the upper left corner).
If you don't have Google Search Console, find out how to set it up and integrate it into your website or have a programmer do it for you.
2. Open the full report
3. Open the "pages" tab
4. Filter out the relevant page from Google's UTM code, which is added to Google business profile
You can do this in two ways.
The first and easiest is to click on a specific URL.
The second and slightly more difficult is to click on:
1. "New"
2. "Page"
3. Then paste the part of the URL you want to filter. It is best to paste what comes after the word "UTM," e.g.
"?utm_source=google_search&utm_medium=google_business_profile&utm_campaign=website_button"
5. Done!
Now you can check in the "Queries" tab for which keywords your business profile was visible on Google and the Google Maps app to potential customers and by which keywords users visited your website by clicking the "website" button in your Google business profile.
It's worth considering that Google's statistics have a vast error tolerance, which makes it inaccurate. It works best for a business profile with high traffic and a fair amount of visibility on Google.
Summary
In conclusion, tracking traffic from a Google business profile to a website is possible and easy thanks to Google's UTM codes - a set of parameters added to URL links. This allows you to analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and sources of traffic to your site, which could be a Google business profile, for example.
Positioning your Google business profile and adding UTM tracking codes will allow you to analyze better your online visibility, the quality of the traffic you are getting from your Google business profile, and, most importantly, achieve better results for your business. Good luck!
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