Track calls and enquiries

What the profile reports

The Google Business Profile's performance section reports how many times the listing was shown, and how many calls, direction requests, website clicks and messages it produced, by month. Those are Google's own counts and they are the most direct measure of what the profile is doing. Record the four figures monthly. Their definitions are Google's, and the handbook does not restate them beyond noting that a call counted there is a tap on the call button, not necessarily a connected conversation.

What the website can report

Form submissions, if the form fires an event the analytics tool records. Calls, if the phone number on the site is a tracking number that forwards to the real one, or if a tap on the number fires an event. Bookings, if the booking system reports them. Setting these up is technical but modest, and it is the part of measurement most often skipped, which is why so many businesses know their rankings and not their leads.

Ask where each enquiry came from at the point of contact, too. “How did you hear about us?” on the form and on the phone is crude and it works, and it catches the customers who found you on Google and then typed the address directly.

The monthly line

One row per month: profile calls, profile direction requests, website calls, form submissions, bookings, and where possible the number that became customers. Beside it the same months last year, because Dublin businesses are seasonal and a rise against last month may be the season, not the work. Beside that the baseline.

What it tells you

Whether the work is paying for itself, which is the only question that matters. If pack visibility in the previous chapter rises and the monthly line does not, the wrong queries were targeted or the profile is not converting; the profile chapter and the pages chapter are where to look. If the line rises and visibility does not, something else is working, referrals or reputation, and it is worth knowing that too.

What not to do

Do not report rankings as results. Do not count impressions as leads. Do not report a rise without the same month last year beside it. Do not claim a lead came from search because it arrived during a month when search was worked on. The hiring chapter turns these into questions to ask any company that reports to you.

Illustrative example. A café adds a call event to its site's phone number and asks every phone booking how they found it. Its monthly line shows profile calls, site calls and form bookings, and it discovers that direction requests from the profile are its largest figure, which none of its previous reports had mentioned. That describes a setup, not a measured result.

Output

The monthly line, started, with the same months last year and the baseline beside it. Then the schedule that keeps all of it running: the monthly routine.