By Lisa Barone
If you’ve been holding out for just one more reason to list your small business in Google’s Local Business Center, you’ve got it. Google is now offering a full dashboard of information to small businesses who are proactive enough to verify their company’s listing. The dashboards contain information intended to help SMB owners understand where their visitors are coming from and how they found them in the search results.
Starting this month, small business owners who create and verify their business listing in Google’s Local Business Center will be privy to their own customized dashboard that reveals stats like how often people visit your site, your top search queries, how many times people asked for driving directions and the cities the people who ask are from. If you take a step back, you’ll see that Google is really offering basic analytic data to help you understand and improve your Web site. Through the Local Business Center dashboard, you’re given a strong look into what terms you’re ranking well for, where you need to improve, and maybe even whether or not you need to open up a new location in a popular area.
The motive for Google’s generosity is very likely two-fold.
First, they want small business owners to verify their business listings so that they’re more accurate and are therefore more useful to searchers. The more complete Google’s listings are, the more people will use them, and the bigger Google Local will grow. However, you have to wonder if Google isn’t also doing a good job setting up small business owners to dive into the area of paid local search by encouraging the use of free analytics. (more)
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