Google My Business launches new performance reporting features that give local businesses a clearer, more detailed picture of how customers find and interact with their listings. If you manage a business profile on Google, this update changes how you track searches, views, and customer actions, and understanding it early gives you a real competitive edge in local search.
Google has overhauled performance reporting inside Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), replacing older Insights data with a richer, more segmented reporting dashboard. The new system separates search types, maps views, and customer actions more clearly, giving businesses actionable data they previously had to estimate. This guide walks you through every change, what the metrics mean, and how to act on them.
⚡ Key Takeaways
- The new performance report replaces the older “Insights” tab with more granular search and interaction data.
- You can now see separate metrics for Google Search views and Google Maps views, which was not possible before.
- Direction requests, website clicks, and phone calls are tracked individually, giving you clearer conversion data.
- The reporting window extends up to six months, compared to the previous 28-day limit for some metrics.
- Photo view data has been restructured and now reflects more accurate impression counts rather than cumulative totals.
- Businesses with multiple locations can compare performance across profiles from a single dashboard view.
- Acting on this data through consistent profile optimisation directly improves your local search rankings over time.
What Changed and Why It Matters for Your Business
The old Google My Business Insights dashboard had a well-known limitation: it bundled data in ways that made it hard to draw clear conclusions. For example, you could see total views but could not easily separate views from Google Search versus Google Maps. The new performance reporting fixes this by splitting data into distinct categories that reflect how customers actually behave.
According to Google’s own documentation (Google, 2022), the updated metrics are designed to give business owners a more accurate understanding of discovery, engagement, and conversion at each stage of the customer journey. This is a significant shift because it moves the reporting closer to what digital marketers have always wanted: source-level attribution for local search interactions.
For businesses investing in local search optimisation strategies, this data upgrade is not just a cosmetic change. It gives you a feedback loop that tells you whether your profile updates are actually working.
How to Access the New Performance Report: Step by Step
Before you can use the new data, you need to know where to find it. Google has moved reporting into the main Business Profile interface, which you can access directly through Google Search or Google Maps when you are signed into the account that manages your listing.
- Sign in to Google: Use the Google account linked to your Business Profile. Search for your business name directly in Google Search.
- Open your Business Profile panel: Your profile management panel will appear above the search results. Click on “Performance” from the options shown.
- Select your date range: The new reporting allows you to select time ranges up to six months. Choose a range that gives you enough data to spot trends rather than day-to-day noise.
- Review each metric section: The dashboard is divided into sections for searches, views, and interactions. Work through each one systematically rather than jumping to the totals.
- Export your data: Click the download icon to export performance data as a CSV file. This is useful if you manage multiple locations or want to build your own reporting spreadsheets.
- Compare periods: Use the comparison feature to measure performance month over month or quarter over quarter. This is the most reliable way to spot meaningful changes rather than reacting to weekly fluctuations.
💡 Pro Tip: Always look at a minimum of 90 days of data before drawing conclusions about your profile performance. Local search traffic can be heavily seasonal, and short windows often mislead more than they inform.
Understanding the New Search Metrics in Detail
The search section of the new performance report is where most businesses will find the biggest change from the old Insights system. You now see two distinct categories of searches that brought up your profile.
Direct Searches
These occur when someone searches for your business name or address specifically. A high number of direct searches means your brand awareness is strong and people already know you exist. This metric is useful for tracking offline marketing efforts, word-of-mouth referrals, and repeat customers.
Discovery Searches
These are the searches that matter most for growth. Discovery searches occur when someone searches for a product, service, or category and your listing appears without them specifically looking for you. A rise in discovery searches typically indicates that your profile relevance and local SEO performance is improving. According to BrightLocal (2023), 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours, which makes discovery search volume a critical growth metric.
Branded Searches
Branded searches are those that include your business name as part of a broader query. For example, someone searching for your business name combined with a service type. This category helps you understand cross-sell and upsell opportunities from existing brand-aware audiences.
Decoding the Views Data: Search vs Maps
One of the most requested improvements in the old Insights system was the ability to separate views by platform. The new report delivers this. You can now see exactly how many times your profile appeared in Google Search results versus how many times it appeared on Google Maps.
This separation matters because the intent behind each platform is different. Google Maps views often indicate someone who is already in the consideration or decision stage, meaning they are closer to visiting your location or calling you. Google Search views can include a wider range of intent levels, from early research to ready-to-buy.
If your Maps views are low but your Search views are high, it may indicate your profile lacks strong location signals or your Google Maps listing needs optimisation, such as updated hours, accurate address information, or more photos of your physical location. Understanding the nuances here connects directly to the kind of errors covered in our post on common Google My Business mistakes that hurt local visibility.
Customer Actions: What the Interaction Data Tells You
Beyond views and searches, the new performance report gives you clearer data on what people actually do after seeing your profile. These actions are the closest thing to conversions that Google Business Profile reporting provides.
| Customer Action | What It Means | Optimisation Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Website Clicks | User clicked the website link on your profile | Strong interest but not yet converted. Check your landing page quality. |
| Direction Requests | User requested directions to your location | High purchase intent. Indicates the user plans to visit. |
| Phone Calls | User clicked the call button on your profile | High intent. Track whether calls are being answered and converted. |
| Messages | User sent a message through Business Profile | Medium intent. Response time affects conversion rate significantly. |
| Booking Clicks | User clicked a booking or appointment link | Very high intent. Ensure booking flow is smooth and fast. |
According to Moz (2023), businesses that actively manage their Google Business Profile see an average of 7 times more clicks than those that leave their profile unmanaged. The new interaction data makes it possible to pinpoint exactly which actions are performing well and which are falling short.
Photo Performance Data: What Actually Changed
Photo reporting has been one of the most misunderstood parts of Google Business Profile analytics. The old system showed cumulative photo views that could look impressive but were not particularly useful for decision-making. The new report restructures this data.
You now see photo views segmented by the type of photo, such as owner-uploaded versus customer-uploaded images. You can also compare your photo count and photo views against businesses in your category, which gives you a competitive benchmark rather than just a raw number.
This benchmarking feature is genuinely useful. If your profile has 20 photos but similar businesses in your category have an average of 60, you can see directly that this gap may be limiting your visibility. Google’s own research (Google, 2021) found that businesses with more than 100 photos receive 520% more calls and 2,717% more direction requests than the average business.
💡 Pro Tip: Upload photos consistently rather than all at once. Profiles that show regular photo activity signal to Google that the business is actively maintained, which correlates with improved ranking in the local pack.
Using the New Data to Improve Your Local SEO Strategy
Having access to better data only creates value if you act on it. Here is how to connect the new performance metrics to specific optimisation tasks.
Low Discovery Searches
If your discovery search numbers are low, focus on your business categories, attributes, and the keywords present in your business description. Google uses these signals to determine when to show your profile for non-branded queries. Review your primary and secondary categories carefully and make sure they reflect how customers actually search for your services, not just how you describe your business internally.
For deeper strategic guidance on improving how customers find you through search, our resource on local answer engine optimisation practices covers complementary tactics that work alongside your Business Profile.
High Views but Low Actions
This pattern, where many people see your profile but few take action, usually points to a mismatch between what your profile promises and what customers find when they investigate further. Check that your hours are accurate, your photos are current, your reviews are recent, and your website link goes to a relevant, fast-loading page.
Low Phone Calls Despite High Direction Requests
This combination often appears in service businesses where customers prefer to show up rather than call ahead. It is not always a problem, but if you want to increase calls (for example, to pre-qualify customers), consider adding a prominent call-to-action in your business description and enabling the messaging feature as an alternative contact method.
Multi-Location Reporting: Managing Performance Across Multiple Profiles
If you manage multiple business locations, the new performance reporting also improves your ability to compare them. Through the Google Business Profile Manager (formerly the bulk management dashboard), you can pull performance data across locations and identify which profiles are underperforming relative to others in your portfolio.
The key metrics to compare across locations include discovery search volume per location, direction request rates relative to the population density of each area, and phone call volumes relative to the number of reviews each location has. Locations with many reviews and low call volumes may have a different problem than locations with few reviews and high views, and the new reporting helps you separate these issues clearly.
Businesses operating across multiple locations often benefit from working with a professional team. Our comprehensive digital marketing services include structured local profile management that scales across large location portfolios without losing the local relevance that drives rankings.
💡 Warning: Do not compare raw numbers between locations in different competitive markets without adjusting for context. A profile in a densely populated urban area will naturally show higher absolute numbers than one in a smaller market, even if the smaller-market profile is actually performing better relative to its competition.
How the New Reporting Connects to Broader SEO Trends
The timing of this performance reporting update is not accidental. Google has been investing heavily in making local search more transparent and useful, partly in response to growing competition from AI-driven search tools and platforms. Understanding how Google is evolving its local search ecosystem helps you position your optimisation efforts correctly.
For context on how Google’s broader search changes are playing out, the analysis of Google AI Overviews versus AI Mode explores how AI is reshaping what appears in search results, including how local business information is surfaced. Similarly, understanding Google’s new WebMCP protocol and its SEO implications gives additional context to how Google is evolving its data infrastructure, which ultimately affects local search too.
For businesses that want to connect their Business Profile performance to their website’s organic visibility, tools like page content analysis remain essential. Improving your website’s content quality directly supports your profile’s ability to rank in the local pack, a point covered thoroughly in our guide on using page content analysis to boost SEO.
Practical Action Plan: What to Do With Your New Performance Data
Once you have reviewed your new performance dashboard, use this priority framework to decide where to focus your time and resources.
- Do This Now: Verify that all core profile information is accurate, including address, phone number, website URL, and business hours. Errors here directly suppress all other performance metrics because customers who cannot reach you or find you accurately will not convert regardless of how many times they view your profile.
- Do This Now: Review your photo count against the category benchmark shown in the new report. If you are significantly below average, schedule a photo upload session within the next two weeks. Aim for a mix of interior, exterior, team, and product or service images.
- Worth Doing: Audit your business categories and description using the discovery search data as a guide. If discovery searches are lower than expected for your type of business, your categories may not align with how customers search. Test alternative primary categories if the data supports it.
- Worth Doing: Set up a monthly review of the six-month trend data. Create a simple spreadsheet that records key metrics each month so you can track whether optimisation efforts are producing measurable results over time.
- Worth Doing: Enable and actively manage the Google Business Profile messaging feature if your interaction data shows that a significant portion of your audience is in the research phase rather than the ready-to-visit phase. Responding to messages quickly improves both conversion rates and your profile’s engagement signals.
- Low Priority: Deep-dive competitor benchmarking in the photo section. While useful, this data is most valuable after you have addressed the core profile accuracy and category issues that have a more direct impact on search performance.
- Low Priority: Experimenting with Google Posts frequency based on engagement data. Posts can support visibility but rarely move the needle as significantly as core profile completeness and review volume. Focus on posts after higher-impact items are in place.
If you want hands-on help implementing these changes across your profiles, our team at 1Solutions provides structured search engine optimisation services that include Business Profile management as part of a broader local visibility strategy.
Conclusion
Google My Business launches new performance reporting that genuinely moves the needle for businesses serious about local search. The separation of Search and Maps data, the clearer interaction tracking, and the extended reporting window give you tools that were simply not available before. The businesses that benefit most will be those that treat this data as a regular part of their marketing review process rather than something to check occasionally.
The new dashboard is not perfect. It still does not offer the granular attribution that platforms like Google Ads provide, and comparing data across the transition period requires care because the methodology changed. But it is a significant step forward, and acting on it now puts you ahead of competitors who are still relying on the old Insights data or ignoring their profiles entirely.
Review your dashboard this week, document what you find, and use the priority framework above to start making improvements. Local search visibility compounds over time, and the businesses that build strong profiles today will hold their positions in the local pack for months and years ahead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the new Google Business Profile performance report available to all businesses?
Yes, the updated performance reporting has been rolled out broadly across Google Business Profile accounts. If you do not see it yet, ensure you are accessing your profile through Google Search or the Business Profile Manager interface rather than the older standalone app, which has been discontinued.
Why do my old Insights numbers look different from the new performance data?
Google changed the methodology for counting views and interactions when it launched the new reporting system. The old data used different counting logic, so direct comparisons between historical Insights data and new performance data are not always meaningful. Use the new report as your baseline going forward rather than trying to reconcile the two systems.
How long does it take for optimisation changes to show up in performance data?
Most profile changes take between two and four weeks to reflect measurably in performance metrics. Category changes and description updates can take slightly longer because Google needs time to re-evaluate your profile’s relevance for different query types. Use the six-month view to assess impact rather than looking for instant results.
Can I see which specific keywords triggered my discovery searches?
No. Google does not reveal the specific search queries that led to your profile appearing. You can see the volume of discovery searches but not the individual queries. For keyword-level data, you need to use Google Search Console connected to your website, which gives you organic search query data that can complement your Business Profile metrics.
Does the new performance reporting work differently for service area businesses compared to location-based businesses?
The core metrics are the same, but service area businesses will naturally see fewer direction requests since they do not have a physical storefront customers visit. For service area businesses, phone calls and website clicks are the most important interaction metrics to track, as these represent the primary conversion paths from the Business Profile to a customer relationship.
