A new study of 45,000 local businesses reveals how customers are finding and interacting with Google My Business listings.
New research from BrightLocal explores Google My Business insights trends for 36 different industries across 4 countries.
The study aims to establish benchmarks for profile views, searches, actions, photos, calls, and overall growth.
Here are some of the key findings of the study.
The average business is found over 1000 times per month
On average, a business is found in 1,009 searches per month. That’s roughly 33 times a day.
So there’s 33 opportunities every day to leave a positive impression on customers with your Google My Business listing.
Of those searches, 84% are discovery searches, which are queries for a business category rather than the specific name of a business.
The majority (75%) of searches for local businesses are done on Search, with the remaining 25% on Google Maps.
An average conversion rate of 5%
A business receives, on average, 59 actions from their Google My Business listing each month
As the title states, that means roughly 5% of Google My Business listing views result in a website click, call, or direction request.
That may seem low, but it’s actually a 25% increase from 2017 to 2018 – growing from 3.87% to 4.83%.
A positive correlation between images and views
Having more images in a Google My Business listing correlates positively with receiving more views.
The median number of images for hotels is 150, the highest of all business categories. Hotels are also leading in listing views, receiving the highest median views on both Search (13,042) and Maps (14,434).
By comparison, the median number of images across all categories is 11, while the average number of search views is 943.
Searches and clicks are up
When comparing Google My Business insights from 2017 to 2018, the study finds direct searches grew 38%, while discovery searches grew by 6%.
In addition, businesses received 29% more website clicks from their GMB listings in 2018, and 22% more calls.
The only metric that went down was direction requests, which fell by 13%.
For more GMB insights, see the full study here.
