Google Business Profile Figures Dropped: What's the Cause?

Recently, we have noticed that many businesses are experiencing a sharp decline in impressions, interactions and directions on their Google Business Profile. Is this decline due to seasonal influences? Or do other factors play a role? We have investigated this thoroughly!

Over the past few years, Garden Connect has highlighted the Google Business Profile of several garden centres. Someone who has seen your Google Business Profile is most likely also visiting your garden centre, because why else would they be viewing your profile. By measuring impressions of the Google Business Profile, website clicks and directions, we get a clear picture of the effectiveness of the Local SEO marketing solution.

Google Business Profile Transition to Performance Metrics

In late December 2022, Google announced a major API change that directly affects your business listing metrics. The changes, which went into effect on 20 February 2023, allow us to track performance more accurately.

Read more about the update from Google here.

One consequence of this update is that the figures since the update compared to 2022 are very different, but a lot more realistic.

What does this change in measurement method mean?

Previously, views were counted as the number of times a profile was shown on Google Maps or in search results. This meant that if a user visited the same business listing multiple times on the same day or within minutes, Google counted each view separately.

Now Google uses a new definition for listing impressions:

"Impressions of the business on Google Maps/Search. If the same user visits a listing multiple times in one day, these are counted as one impression."

This means that repeated visits by the same user from the same platform (Google/Maps) and device (mobile/desktop) within a 24-hour period will only be recorded as one impression.

What does this mean for you?

Although the statistics show a downward trend, fortunately, your local findability is not affected by this.

The measurements are now more accurate and reflect the real situation.

Instead of measuring the number of visits or interactions, we now focus on the number of unique users per day for displays and directions, and per month for searches.

This does mean that it becomes more difficult to objectively compare these statistics with previous years, but again, our Online Marketers will find a solution for this!

Still have questions? Then contact us and we will be happy to help you.