Google Business Profile Insights Guide

Most Australian business owners I meet have the same problem with their Google Business Profile insights. They log in, see a wall of numbers, and walk away with no idea what to actually do differently on Monday morning.

That’s not their fault. Google has rebadged “Insights” into “Performance,” moved the report out of the old dashboard, and quietly retired or redefined half a dozen metrics in the last two years. If the last time you checked was 2022, the screen you’re looking at today is a different product.

This guide is the version I wish more clients had read before our first call. I’ll walk you through where the data lives now, what each metric actually tells you, and the small handful of moves that turn that data into more phone calls and more job-site visits.

Here’s what you’ll get out of it:

• Where the data lives now: performance reports sit inside Google Search and the Maps app, not the old business.google.com dashboard.
• The metrics worth your time: profile interactions, search queries, calls, directions, website clicks, bookings.
• What Direct, Discovery and Branded searches really mean: and the diagnosis when one is high and another is flat.
• A weekly 10-minute review: the only template you need to actually stick to it.
• Why your data might be missing: and what to do about each cause.

What Are Google Business Profile Insights (And What Actually Changed)?

Google Business Profile insights are the performance reports Google gives every verified business on Google Search and Google Maps. They tell you how people found your profile, what they searched, and what they did next, calls, directions, website clicks, bookings, food orders.

They’re free, they live inside your own profile, and they’re refreshed within a day or two of the activity happening.

A quick recap of what changed:

• Around late 2022, Google retired the standalone business.google.com dashboard for most single-location businesses.
• The old “Insights” tab was replaced by a leaner Performance report living inside Google Search and the Google Maps app.
• The profile views metric was rolled into a broader Business Profile interactions count, partly to discourage vanity-metric chasing.
• In November 2024, the calls metric was split to distinguish calls made directly from the profile versus calls made via your website.
• The messages metric was quietly deprecated across many regions during 2024, so don’t be surprised if it’s missing from yours.

The underlying signal hasn’t changed though. This is still the closest thing to free Keyword Planner data a local business will ever get. You just have to know where to look.

Where to Find Your Business Profile Performance Report

You no longer manage the profile from a dedicated dashboard. You manage it directly from Search or Maps while you’re signed into the Google account that owns the listing.

On desktop

1. Open Google and search for your own business name.
2. Make sure you’re signed in to the Google account that owns the profile.
3. A management strip will appear at the top of the results, click Performance.
4. Choose the timeframe (last 7 days, last 28 days, this month, last quarter, or up to the past 6 months).

If the management strip doesn’t appear, you’re either signed in to the wrong account, the profile is suspended, or you don’t have access (a common pain point for marketers handling client profiles).

On mobile (Google Maps app)

1. Open the Google Maps app and tap your profile picture (top right).
2. Tap Your Business Profile.
3. Tap Promote, then Performance.
4. You’ll see the same timeframe selector and the same core metrics, calls, directions, website clicks and searches.

The mobile view is the one most owners I work with end up using. Takes 60 seconds to check in the morning, which is the whole point.

The Six Metrics That Actually Matter

Google shows you a lot of numbers. Six of them earn your attention each week.

1. Business Profile interactions. The headline metric. Every call, direction request, website click, booking, message, food order, and certain product clicks roll into this figure. Use it as your “heartbeat” number, month-on-month direction matters more than the daily reading.

2. Searches breakdown (search queries). The list of actual phrases people typed before landing on your profile. This is the gold. More on it in a minute.

3. Number of calls. Calls made by tapping the call button on your profile. Since November 2024, the report also separates calls placed via your website link, so you can see how many people called you straight from Search versus after a website detour.

4. Directions requests. How many people tapped to get directions to your address. Strong proxy for foot-traffic intent, especially for hospitality, retail and home-base trades.

5. Website clicks. Taps on the website link from your profile. Drops here often mean your hours, services or photos look incomplete next to a competitor.

6. Bookings and food orders. Only relevant if you’ve enabled Reserve with Google, a third-party booking integration, or food-ordering partners. When they exist, they’re the cleanest revenue-attribution metric Google gives you.

If you want a fuller field guide to reading each one in context, I’ve written a companion piece on how to interpret Google Business Profile metrics.

Direct, Discovery and Branded Searches, What Each One Really Means

Inside the Searches section, Google groups every query into three buckets. Most owners glance at it and move on. They shouldn’t.

• Direct: the person typed your business name (or a clear variant) into Google. They already knew about you.
• Discovery: the person typed a category-style query like “plumber Subiaco” or “best Vietnamese in Footscray”. They didn’t know about you specifically; Google surfaced your profile.
• Branded: they typed a brand related to your business (e.g. a franchise parent, a product brand you stock). Less common, but worth scanning.

The ratio between Direct and Discovery is the single most diagnostic pattern in your performance report. Here’s how I read it on client calls.

That last row is where a geo-grid ranking tool earns its keep, the performance report alone won’t tell you whether a competitor moved into your suburb.

Search Queries: The Most Underused Asset In GBP

If you do one thing with your insight data this month, do this.

Scroll to the Searches section and look at the actual queries people typed before Google showed them your profile. According to Joy Hawkins and the Sterling Sky team, this is the closest thing local businesses have to free Keyword Planner data for their own market.

What I want you to do with it:

1. Export the last 90 days of search queries.
2. Sort by impressions and pull out anything you don’t currently mention on your profile or website.
3. Add those phrases, naturally, to your business description, your services list, your products and the page on your website that maps to that intent.
4. Re-check in 60 days. You’ll usually see Discovery searches rise on those exact terms.

The reason it works is simple. Google sees your profile is now obviously associated with that phrase, both on the profile itself and on the linked site. The next time someone searches it nearby, you’re a stronger match.

For most of my Perth clients, this single loop has been the biggest lever on Discovery searches in the last 18 months, bigger than posting, bigger than chasing reviews.

Calls, Directions And Website Clicks, Turning Interactions Into Actions

Before you read any of the interactions trends, know what the numbers actually count. The single biggest attribution gap in the dashboard is the “Calls” metric: it counts taps on the call button, not connected calls.

Sterling Sky has documented this directly. Google has no way to track whether the call connected, how long it lasted, or whether anyone answered. A lot of the recorded taps are people who hit the button by accident on mobile, or tapped and closed the dialler before dialling.

If you want a real count of connected calls, you need call-tracking software on the receiving line. The GBP dashboard number is a directional signal, not a measurement.

The interactions metrics tell you what people did. The job is to read the trend, not the daily number.

• Calls trending up, website clicks trending down. Buyers are deciding from your profile alone. Make sure your profile has the answers, hours, services, photos, attributes. If your prices are an objection, address them in your description and Posts.
• Directions up, calls flat. People are coming to you in person. Double-check Google’s listed entrance, parking notes and accessibility attributes. Add fresh photos of the front of the building.
• Website clicks up but no calls or directions. Your profile is doing the heavy lifting but your website isn’t converting. Audit your landing page CTAs. A common fix is making the phone number a tap-to-call button on mobile.
• Everything flat for six weeks or more. Likely a ranking or visibility issue, not a profile-content issue. Run a geo-grid scan and check whether your primary category has been auto-changed (this happens more than people realise).

The interactions metric isn’t a marketing scorecard. It’s a diagnostic instrument. Read it that way.

When GBP clicks go down but your business is up

Local service businesses started reporting a pattern in 2025 that’s accelerated through early 2026. GBP-reported clicks and calls drop, sometimes sharply, while the actual phone keeps ringing and bookings keep landing.

Basaropt’s analysis traces it to three converging shifts. AI Overviews are answering more queries before the user clicks anything. Local Service Ads sit above the map pack and steal attribution. And AI agents (ChatGPT, Gemini-backed assistants) are calling businesses directly on behalf of users, none of which registers as a GBP click-to-call.

If your overall lead volume is steady or up while the GBP dashboard says you’re trending down, you’re seeing attribution drift, not a real performance drop. Fix the measurement before you fix the profile. Track total inbound leads via your phone system or a call-tracking service, your CRM, and GA4 conversions, then triangulate against GBP. The dashboard alone is an increasingly partial picture.

What “good” looks like in 2026

Three benchmark points worth knowing, because the dashboard gives you numbers without context.

• View-to-action conversion rate. Searchlab’s 2026 study puts the average profile at about 5% (roughly 60 actions per 1,260 views per month). Below 3% means your profile needs work. Above 7% means you’re outperforming most businesses.
• Click-to-call rate by industry. Per WebFX 2026, service businesses (plumbers, roofers, electricians) typically see 10-15%, roughly double the all-industries average.
• Action mix. BrightLocal’s 45,000-listing study (still the most-quoted): a typical profile sees roughly 33 website clicks, 14 direction requests, and 12 call clicks per month. Call clicks plus direction requests together make up about 44% of all actions, with website clicks the rest.

Use these as direction-of-travel, not as targets.

Why behavioural signals now matter beyond measurement

Behavioural signals aren’t just feedback anymore, they’re an increasingly heavy ranking input. Koira’s May 2026 local-SEO update tracker documents the recent shift: calls, direction requests, and website clicks generated from your GBP listing are now more decisive map-pack ranking factors than keyword-stuffed descriptions or category stuffing.

The strategic implication is that the numbers in your Insights dashboard aren’t just a report card. They’re inputs into how Google ranks you next month. Generating real interactions off your profile is genuine SEO work, not just lead generation.

Bookings, Food Orders And Messages, When They Apply

Three more metrics that only show up when relevant.

• Bookings. Visible if you’ve connected Reserve with Google or a supported booking partner (e.g. healthcare and beauty providers using approved scheduling tools). Highest-trust metric in the report because it ties to a real transaction.
• Food orders. Visible if you’re connected to a Google food-ordering partner. Trends here mirror local foot traffic surprisingly well for cafes and takeaway.
• Messages. Increasingly limited as of 2024-2026 and missing in many Australian categories. If you have it, reply within 24 hours, Google does measure response time and it affects whether the chat button appears at all.

If none of these apply to your business, don’t lose sleep over them. Focus on the core five (interactions, queries, calls, directions, website clicks).

How To Download Your Business Profile Performance Data

For anything more than a quick glance, get the data into a spreadsheet.

Single profile

From the Performance report, choose your date range and use the download option on individual sections (calls, queries, directions). It exports as a spreadsheet you can drop into Sheets or Excel.

Multiple profiles (bulk)

If you manage multiple locations through Business Profile Manager, use the bulk insights download to pull performance data for every location in one spreadsheet. This is what every agency dashboard runs on underneath. I lean on it for monthly client reports and for spotting locations that are quietly drifting.

If your data is locked into an agency tool you can’t access, ask for the raw bulk export. Real data, in your spreadsheet, you own.

A Weekly 10-Minute Business Profile Review

This is the routine I give every client. Ten minutes, every Monday.

1. Open the Performance report on mobile. Last 7 days vs previous 7 days.
2. Look at total interactions. Up, flat or down? Note the direction.
3. Scroll to Searches. Click into the breakdown and skim the top 10 queries. Anything new?
4. Check calls, directions and website clicks as a group. One up and others down is normal. All three down is a flag.
5. Open your profile as a customer. Search your business in an incognito window. Are photos, hours and services correct? Any new questions in Q&A?
6. Add one Post. Doesn’t have to be fancy. A recent job, this week’s special, a Q&A answer.
7. Reply to any new review in the same session.
8. Log the numbers in a simple sheet (date, interactions, calls, directions, website clicks). Three months of this and your trends become obvious.

Ten minutes, once a week. It outperforms 90% of “GBP audits” I see done quarterly.

Troubleshooting: Missing Data, Dropped Views, Suspended Profile

When the report looks wrong, the cause is almost always one of these:

• Profile is too new. Performance data typically populates within a few days of verification, but the queries section can take 2-3 weeks before it shows anything useful.
• Not enough activity. Below a Google-internal threshold (usually a few dozen impressions per period), some sections show “no data yet”. Keep posting, keep gathering reviews.
• Profile suspended or unverified. No Performance button at all. Check the GBP help centre for suspension messaging and start the reinstatement process. We help businesses through this regularly, see Search Scope’s GBP optimisation services if you’re stuck.
• You’re signed into the wrong Google account. The single most common cause I see. Sign out, sign back in with the owner account.
• Recent change to your primary category. Discovery searches can crash for 2-4 weeks while Google re-classifies you. If the change was deliberate, ride it out. If it was automatic, revert it.
• New competitor in the local pack. Your data didn’t drop, theirs rose. A geo-grid scan will confirm.
• Wrong date range. Easily missed. Default is often last 7 days; toggle to last 28 or last 90.

If you’ve ruled all those out and your numbers are still strange, the issue usually isn’t the report. It’s the underlying profile health. That’s the point to bring in a second pair of eyes.

One last possibility worth checking: a reporting glitch on Google’s side. Street Fight documented one in July 2025 where impression counts dipped noticeably across hundreds of accounts while engagement metrics (clicks, calls, directions) held steady. That pattern, one metric down while the others stay flat, points at a reporting bug rather than a real visibility loss. Before you act on it, check the Local Search Forum or the GBP Help Community to see whether others are reporting the same anomaly.

When To Bring In Help

If you’re spending more than an hour a week trying to make sense of your insights, or you’ve noticed a sustained drop you can’t explain, that’s the signal to talk to someone.

I’m Dorian. I’ve been doing SEO since 2013 and founded Search Scope in 2021 to help Australian businesses win on Google Maps and local search. We work with tradies, clinics, hospitality groups and service businesses across Perth and Australia-wide.

If you’d like a second opinion on what your insights are telling you, book a 30-minute strategy call, no pitch, just a straight read of your numbers. Or email [email protected].

For broader context, our Google Maps SEO and local SEO pages cover what comes after you understand the data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Google Business Profile Insights free? Yes. Performance data is included with every verified Business Profile on Google. There’s no paid tier and no upgrade.

Can I see how many times my business name has been searched? Yes. The Searches breakdown inside the Performance report shows the queries customers used, and groups them into Direct (your name), Discovery (category searches) and Branded.

How far back does the data go? Up to the past 6 months on a rolling basis. If you need a longer history, export to a spreadsheet monthly.

Where did Google My Business Insights go? The old Insights tab was retired with the rest of the legacy Google My Business dashboard. Everything now lives in the Performance report inside Google Search and the Google Maps app.

Why is my profile interactions number lower than my old “views”? Google removed the standalone profile views metric and replaced it with Business Profile interactions, which counts actions (calls, clicks, directions, etc.) rather than passive impressions. Different denominator, different number.

How do I see insights for multiple business profiles? Use the bulk insights download inside Business Profile Manager for multi-location accounts. It exports all locations into one spreadsheet.

Do GBP attributes affect my insights? Yes, indirectly. Attributes change which discovery filters your profile appears in (e.g. “wheelchair accessible”, “outdoor seating”). See why GBP attributes matter.

What’s the fastest way to lift my Discovery searches? Mine your Searches breakdown for queries you don’t currently mention, add them to your services and description, and reinforce them on the matching page of your website. Re-check in 60 days.

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Your insights are not a scoreboard. They’re a feedback loop. Read them weekly, act on what they tell you, and the rest of your local SEO gets easier.