SEO Belfast

Google anounced the new dashboard back in June and now at last it looks like it’s been rolled out for the UK and Northern Ireland results.

If you haven’t signed up for a Local Business Account now’s the time to go ahead and do it. If you’ve already got an account log in and you’ll see a ‘view report’ link. Just click on the link and you’ll see the dashboard.

You’ll notice 2 timeline graphs under the heading Activity. The first timeline relates to the number of Impressions and the second relates to the number of Actions.

Impressions refer to the number of times your business appeared as a search result on Google Search or Google maps irrespective of whether a user clicked through to your website.

Actions refer to how many times users interacted with your listing in the time frame which you can specify. This number includes the amount of times the user clicked more information button, or they clicked through to your site or requested driving directions.

Below the timelines you’ll see a breakdown for the actions.

Below that is the top keyword terms that people used to find your website, along with the amount of impressions.

You can also get the Zip/Post codes where driving direction requests came from.

I’ve blogged about the increasing importance of local search before and this new dashboard only underpins the importance that Google is attaching to local search. Looking at stats from various campaigns that I’m running Local Search certainly drives traffic, and is a quick way to get listed on the front page of Google. Only Pay Per Click is comparable in terms of the speed but it costs.

So in a nutshell, what information does it tell you?

1. What people searched for
2. The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google search or Google Maps search in a given period
3. The number of visits to your site
4. The number of requests for directions to your business and where they came from

What it doesn’t tell you?

It doesn’t tell you the regional terms that people searched for. Did someone search for web design Belfast, Malone Road, Lisburn Road or Northern Ireland.

The dashboard although valuable is pretty basic and easy to understand. No one could accuse it of being over complicated or difficult to understand. It certainly lacks the information that Google Analytics provides.

The dashboard sits on it’s own, maybe it could be integrated into Google Analytics at some stage.

I guess this is aimed at local business owners to attract them to Google’s search products and no doubt entice them into Adwords or at some stage to charge them for a local listing once they see the benefits of it.

It would also be nice to see how many times people click on the reviews link.

Learn more about your Geographic Market

The dashboard can also give you an insight into where your customers come from. If you can see that your customers come from within a certain radius then you can tailor your marketing to that area whether it’s local, regional or national. This might be fairly straightforward for a business such as a pizza takeaway, but for other businesses including my own web design business it can certainly help you decide your geographic market and where to pump the advertising spend based on how far people are prepared to travel for your services.

All in all it’s another valuable reporting tool. Although basic for the most part, no doubt over time it’ll become more powerful, with new features, stats and analytics and blossom like Google Webmaster Tools has.