Yesterday the first sightings of phone call reporting in the insights section of your Google Local pages were reported.
There was a bit of scuttlebutt and paranoia about how Google was coming up with the numbers with claims Google was “stalking” our mobile phones and going through our call logs.
The reality is far more mundane – they’re simply counting the number of times someone clicks on the phone number itself. It works the same way as your AdWords. That implies the calls would be largely from smartphones. This call tracking will be great info for businesses which are frequently searched on mobiles.
The new feature has not yet been officially released, according to Jade Wang, Google My Business Community Manager. So if you don’t see it in your insights section of your My Business page, don’t fret. It’s coming. Across my customers’ pages I have a mix of pages with and without.
When you see it, it will look something like this:
One caveat I’m aware of – you must have had at least one phone call in the last 3 months (12 weeks) to see this.
This is a really good move on Google’s part to help local businesses get more information about the benefits of having their Google Local pages set up well and working for them. It has been a matter of faith by many business owners that the local pages did anything for them at all. Now we’re getting a small glimpse at the benefits, in terms any business owner will understand – phone calls.
Are you seeing it yet in your dashboard?
