Conclusion

• Search terms within Google My Business statistics is an important metric that should not be ignored. It’s a great statistic that shows you what search terms you’re exposed to.
• It is useful to keep track of both implicit keywords and explicit keywords with local names (abandoning the idea that one is better than the other).

• Search Console shows impressions, position, click-through rate, etc. for search terms. Searches in Google My Business stats are impressions rather than searches. Trust Google My Business stats for search impressions and Search Console stats for click data.

• If you select the number of clicks among the statistics of Google Search Console, it is similar to the statistics of Google My Business. If a person clicks twice, it counts as 2 clicks in Google Search Console and 1 click in Google My Business.

• Google Search Console uses Google Maps to show you exactly how easily and highly it can rank your website, how much exposure it can get, and what your actual rankings and click-through rates are (reasonable reports you can present to your customers). can be used as

• My conclusion is that for customers who have a website that can track utm parameters and don’t trust the statistics of Gur My Business, I recommend using Google Search Console.

What I learned from this topic

Basically, if you are exposed to a lot on the map, you can get clicks through the [Website] button, so the website gets a lot of clicks, so it is self-evident that there is no better SEO know-how than this.

For normal (organic) searches, mobile searches do not show websites in local packs, they do appear on desktops. The website is displayed in a map search. With this in mind, we recommend that you maximize your website exposure.

One-line summary (TLDR)

Sterling Sky Inc의 Joy Hawkins는 29 개의 서로 다른 비즈니스에 대한 78 개의 서A case study of 1,560 keywords from another GMB listing (within Search Console, we only saw impressions for pages with UTM codes), published on November 24, 2020. We published our findings through Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study , which is the gist of this study.

• In this case study, 66% of the top 10 keyword lists in Search Console and Google My Business Insights differ
• Search queries within Google My Business Insights reflect unique users as opposed to impressions in Search Console.
• Q1 in GMB Insights is not real-time and does not show data from the last 3 months.
• Search Console does not track impressions of local packs that occur on mobile devices.
• Search Console impression data includes searches performed by rank trackers. A single ranking report can drive thousands of impressions in Search Console, but it should show up as 1 device/user within Google My Business Insights.
• Explicit keywords (e.g. “Chicago plumber”) have a lower conversion rate than implicit keywords (e.g. “plumber”)

In this case study, we looked at 78 different GMB listings for 29 different businesses. For each, we pulled the top 10 queries from Search Console over the past three months and compared them to what Google My Business Insights showed in the last quarter.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

We only saw impressions for pages with UTM codes within Search Console.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

Then I took a list of keywords and grouped all the keywords into 4 groups.

1. Near Me – Search terms that contain “near me” or similar search terms. For example, “Divorce attorney near me”.
2. Brand – Keywords containing the specific name of a local company or its employee/practitioner.
3. Implicit Query – A search query that is local in nature but does not specify a specific location. For example, “Divorce Lawyer”.
4. Explicit Query – A search query that includes a location (region name) . For example, “Divorce Attorney Denver” or “Divorce Attorney Colorado”.

Search Console top searches are very different from top searches in Google My Business Insights.

.

After compiling all the data, 66% of the top 10 queries were found to be different. Data from plastic surgeons , for example, differed this way. Of the top 10 lists, there was only one matching keyword.

	구글 마이 비즈니스 (GMB , Google My Business)	Google Search Console
1	Rhinoplasty ( rhinoplasty )	Brad Patt
2	Rhinoplasty Houston	Rhinoplasty ( rhinoplasty )
3	Lip Fillers	Dr Bradford Patt
4	Nose Job Houston	Lip Enhancements
5	Nose Surgery	Dr Patt
6	Lip Injections Houston	Bradford Patt
7	Botox	Facial Plastic Surgery Houston
8	Plastic Surgery Houston	Deviated Septum Doctor Houston
9	Lip Injections	Lip Enhancements Near Me
10	Lip Fillers Houston	Nose Reconstruction Houston

Because of this, I wanted to figure out why the lists differ so much and which one is more accurate.

Google My Business Insights Reports on Unique Users

Unlike other metrics available, search terms in GMB Insights represent unique impressions (though the original text says unique visits, the stats for queries in insights are impressions, not visits). Technically the same person can report twice if they have different devices, but at least while searching for a client the number doesn’t increase when I scan my computer for 10 different things. On the other hand, impressions in Search Console do not mean unique impressions.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

GMB Insights의 1분기는 지난 3개월이 아닙니다.(1 Quarter in GMB Insights is not the last 3 months.)

A second reason the data sets in Google My Business and Google Search Console do not match is that the first quarter of GMB Insights does not represent the last three months. I didn’t know this until recently when I started digging and found an example below.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

These Q1 screenshots were taken on May 13, 2020. It is a business material that manages lawns in summer and installs Christmas lights in winter. I am very confident as we are monitoring his website traffic, advertisements and various other places very heavily. Massive searches for installing Christmas lights don’t happen after Christmas. Also, this is common sense. If this is true, the last three months will be February to April. Also, I checked again several times over the course of several weeks, but the numbers didn’t update. Google doesn’t specify how often it fetches, but it’s not real-time. You need to know exactly when the 3 months of Google My Business are in order to compare data from the same period in Search Console, but since Google does not specify it, period comparison analysis is not possible.

Search Console does not track impressions of local packs that occur on mobile devices. ( Search Console is not tracking impressions from the local pack that happen on mobile devices. )

This is a fact that many people do not realize.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

This becomes a problem when you find out that most local packs on mobile devices (the 3 local vendors that appear at the top of search results when you type in a search term (the top 3 vendors in map searches) don’t have website icons). This essentially means that all these searches/impressions are missing from Search Console.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

This leads to even more inconsistencies when you start to realize just how different the search results you see in your local packs and organic results are. There are countless keywords that rank companies. If you look at the search engine results page (SERP) for “Botox,” for example, you’ll see that it has a local pack at the top, but the rest of the search results strongly favor national sites with no small businesses. (On the other hand, the fact that local companies with a radius of 8 km are displayed in the local pack and nationwide in the natural search results section mean that the local pack is a great opportunity for SMEs. )

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

We also sometimes see local packs showing businesses in that area, while organic search results show businesses nationwide. For example, a search for “auto accident attorney” in Aurora, Ontario gave you a local pack showing lawyers in Aurora, but the organic search results show businesses in Toronto that are 40 minutes away.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

Please note that website icons do not appear in local packs. This means that impressions and records are only recorded after someone clicks on your listing (because at that point after clicking on the listing, Google displays the website icon). It makes Search Console’s CTR for GMB listings look ridiculous, but it all makes sense once you realize that most mobile searches don’t just count as impressions, because the website icon doesn’t appear until the user clicks on the listing.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

Search Console tracks impressions with rank trackers, so many impressions are counted. ( Search Console is tracking impressions from ranking trackers. )

We realized this very quickly when looking into some data in Search Console. I have a specific client with a very large report that tracks a bunch of keywords across different geographic coordinates.

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

It can get thousands of impressions in Search Console, but it should show up as 1 device/user within Google My Business Insights. Darren Shaw running local search ranking tracker , confirmed that if you are using a tracker that tracks both mobile and desktop, it may log as 2 in Google My Business Insights because you have two different devices. In the case study, 40% of the top Search Console keywords that did not appear in Google My Business were explicit search terms. I think the reason is because of the local search community’s habit of putting the local name in the search term, i.e. searching as an explicit search term.

The conversion rate of an explicit search term that searches with a local name (the word is a keyword in a word, but the search term is an accurate expression. A keyword is an advertising term.) is not higher than that of an implicit keyword that does not include a local name.

I think some might assume that explicit keywords will convert better because they are more specific. When we looked at Google Ads accounts for 15 of these businesses and looked at a sample of 894 conversions*, our case study found that the assumption that explicit keyword searches with local names would generate higher conversion rates was false. .

(Image source: Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study )

It is also important to track and verify both explicit and implicit, including near me, as each client is quite different.

Memo

I’m closing this post because I think it’s pretty much cleared up on the subject.

If you think the above information is insufficient, google with “google search console GoogleMyBusiness insight”, including 3 reasons why Google My Business search queries don’t match Search Console . There are many good materials, so please take a look.

References: 1. Search Console vs Google My Business (GMB) Insights: A Large Case Study

2. 3 reasons why Google My Business search queries don’t match Search Console