Google Business Profile insights are the Performance report of your profile: views, searches and customer actions on Search and Maps (calls, directions, website clicks, messages and bookings), available only for verified profiles. Since 8 June 2026 the same metrics can also be seen in Google Analytics 4 by linking the profile, but GA4 keeps only the last 6 months and adds up every linked location.
It is the dashboard almost everyone opens and almost nobody reads properly.
The three mistakes we find most often in audits:
- treating views as visits: a view is a person who saw the profile, not one who came to your site or your shop;
- forgetting that ads are in there too: Google's help page on performance says the data includes views, searches and actions "from organic search results and Google Ads";
- leaving the website link without UTM parameters, so visits from the profile land in GA4 mixed with the rest of your Google traffic.
On that last point we ran a check on 10 November 2026 across 299 verified profiles in five categories in Milan, Rome and Naples. Only 24 tag their website link with UTMs, and they do it in 15 different ways.
Does it matter, as long as the phone rings?
It matters to know why it rings. With Contesini Consulenze, two energy advice offices near Mantua in Italy, we set up tracking and GA4 before switching on any campaign. That is how we know there were 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, and that 68% became a sales opportunity. Without that base, the profile and the ads would have reported the same growth twice.
In this guide:
- what each metric really counts, in one table;
- how to link the profile to GA4 and the limits of the June 2026 link;
- the UTM string to use and what we saw on 299 profiles;
- how to export the data before it disappears.
Let's start.
Where to find your profile insights (and why they sometimes aren't there)
You open the insights from the business profile: search for your business name on Google with the account that manages it, click Performance and pick the period. In the Google Maps app the path is Business, then "See more" next to Performance.
And if the option isn't there?
Almost always the profile isn't verified (performance data exists only for verified profiles) or you are signed in with an account that is neither owner nor manager. If access is still with a former employee, fix that first with the Google Business Profile guide, in the part on who holds the keys.
One detail confuses people: Google only shows the metrics that apply to your business. A business that works at customers' premises and hides its address won't see direction requests; the service area article explains why.
What each metric measures (and what it does NOT)
Every metric in the report counts an action taken on the profile, not a business result. The definitions below come from Google's Business Profile help, checked on 10 November 2026.
| Metric | What Google counts | What it does NOT tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Views | Unique people who saw the profile on Search and Maps, once a day at most | How often the profile appeared, or whether anyone opened it |
| Searches | The terms the profile was shown for; updated at the start of each month, up to 5 days late | How much those terms are searched locally |
| Calls | Clicks on the call button | Whether the call went through or anyone answered |
| Directions | Route requests, cleaned of repeated taps, cancellations and spam | Whether the person actually arrived |
| Website clicks | Clicks on the website link in the profile | What they did on the site: that needs GA4 |
| Messages | Separate conversations started from the profile | How many became customers |
| Bookings | Bookings completed through a provider linked to Reserve with Google | Bookings that came through your own site |
| Menu, products, offers | Clicks or views of that profile content | Sales |
Two points deserve one more line.
Views are people, not appearances. If the same person looks at the profile three times in a day, it counts once. That is why the report number is often lower than the one in Google's summary emails, and the help page says so.
And Google Ads? It sits inside every row. If you also run local campaigns in the same area, a rise in calls from the profile does not prove that local SEO is working. We covered this in the local SEO tools guide: to separate the two channels you need Google Ads conversions on one side and a tracked website link on the other.
How to read the numbers without being fooled (three monthly comparisons)
A single number from the report says little: it becomes useful next to another number from the same period. We look at three.
1. Website clicks divided by views. This is the rate at which people who see the profile choose to visit the site. If it falls while views rise, the profile shows up more but convinces less: photos, average rating and recent reviews are the first suspects, as explained in how to rank higher on Google Maps.
2. Calls plus directions against website clicks. This tells you where conversion happens. In a service business almost everything can go through the phone, in a shop through directions. If your site has a quote form and clicks are a tenth of calls, few people use the form and the work belongs on the profile, not the landing page.
3. Searches with your name against category searches. The report lists the terms; you classify them. If most searches contain your brand name, the profile lives on word of mouth and isn't winning new customers. We split brand and non-brand the same way in Search Console, and the local SEO guide has the case of a shop in Rome: 5.2% CTR on generic local queries against 37.6% on branded ones.
What about year on year?
Only if you have saved the data. More on that two sections down.
Linking the profile to GA4 (since 8 June 2026, with four limits)
Since 8 June 2026 Google Analytics 4 links directly to business profiles: it is announced on the Analytics "what's new" page and the steps are in the Analytics help on the link. Before that date, UTMs were the only way to see the profile in GA4.
You need two permissions: Editor or Administrator on the GA4 property and Owner or Manager on the profile. Then:
- in GA4 go to Admin, Product links;
- open "Google Business Profile links" and click Link;
- choose the profiles and confirm the data sharing.
A "Google Business Profile" collection appears in Reports with seven metrics: interactions, website clicks, calls, directions, messages, bookings and menus.
It looks like the answer to everything.
It isn't, and Google lists the limits itself:
- 6 months of history, no more: even with a longer date range, GA4 shows only the last six months of profile data;
- locations added together: with several linked profiles you see the total and cannot filter one location;
- no explorations or comparisons: profile metrics can't be used in custom explorations and don't accept filters;
- no subproperties, and the link can only be deleted from GA4 admin.
With one location the link is handy. For a chain it is a total that doesn't say which branch is struggling, and the job stays as described for profiles with multiple locations: one profile per location, read location by location.
Above all: the link does not replace UTMs. It tells you how many people clicked through, not what they did next.
The website link with UTMs (only 24 out of 299 profiles do it)
UTMs are parameters added to the website address in the profile, for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp, that tell GA4 where the visit comes from. Without them, a click from the profile arrives with Google as referrer and GA4 files it under google / organic, together with ordinary search results.
How many businesses do it? We measured it.
Method: on 10 November 2026 we pulled from DataForSEO (Business Listings) the 20 verified profiles with the most reviews for five categories, within 8 km of the centre of Milan, Rome and Naples. After removing one duplicate, that is 299 Italian profiles. For each one we read the website link published on the profile.
| Google category | Profiles | With website | With UTM | % with UTM (of those with a website) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dentists | 59 | 59 | 6 | 10.2% |
| Plumbers | 60 | 51 | 1 | 2.0% |
| Lawyers | 60 | 58 | 1 | 1.7% |
| Beauty salons | 60 | 58 | 2 | 3.4% |
| Car repair | 60 | 60 | 14 | 23.3% |
| Total | 299 | 286 | 24 | 8.4% |
One caveat: the car repair category is inflated by dealerships, and 6 of the 14 profiles with UTMs are Stellantis &You branches with parameters set by the manufacturer. Impress and DCD Studi Estetici also use one string for every branch: counted by brand, businesses tagging the link by their own choice are fewer still.
But do those who use UTMs at least use them well?
No. The 24 profiles use 15 different source and medium combinations, from google / organic to milano / gmb.
The problem is how GA4 sorts them. Under the default channel rules a visit goes to Organic Search if the source is a search engine or the medium is exactly "organic". Combinations that match no rule end up in Unassigned.
Across the 24 profiles:
- 14 land in Organic Search, because they use the "organic" medium or the "google" source;
- at least 9 land in Unassigned: the 6 Stellantis branches, the two Impress branches (source "milano" and "napoli", medium "gmb") and the one with source "gmbpost";
- 1, with source "GMB" and medium "SchedaGoogle", depends on Google's list of sources.
They made the effort to tag the link and more than a third of these profiles (9 out of 24) send visits to the channel nobody opens.
The string we use is this:
?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp&utm_content=location-name
Source "google" and medium "organic" keep the visit in Organic Search, where you look for it. The "gbp" campaign separates it from clicks on normal results. The content value tells locations apart, which is exactly what the native GA4 link can't do. Analytics help on UTMs says to always use source, medium and campaign together: this string has all three. To follow the visit through to the form, the next step is Google Tag Manager.
Are your profile visits landing in the right channel?
You have just seen that 9 of 24 profiles tag their link and still send visits to Unassigned, and that GA4 keeps only 6 months of profile data. We check the link, the UTMs, the GA4 link and your exports with you, so you know how many customers really come from the map, and from which location.
Book a strategy callWhy profile clicks don't match GA4 sessions
Website clicks in the report and GA4 sessions will never match, because they count different things at different moments. Google counts the click on the profile; GA4 counts the visit only if the page loads, the tag fires and the visitor has accepted analytics cookies.
The most common causes of the gap:
- cookie consent: people who decline the banner aren't measured by GA4, but their profile click stays in the report;
- people who leave before the page loads: the click exists, the session doesn't;
- links without UTMs or with the wrong ones: the sessions exist, but sit in another channel.
The practical rule: watch the trend, not the figure. If profile clicks rise and sessions with the "gbp" campaign fall, check the link in the profile: someone may have changed it, as the article on suggested edits explains.
Downloading data for several locations (and keeping it beyond 6 months)
The report can be exported to a spreadsheet, for several profiles at once. According to Google's help the path is: Business Profile Manager, select the profiles, Actions, Insights, choose the period and click Download report. If the file shows three asterisks instead of numbers, downloads weren't enabled for that profile.
For many locations or automation, the Business Profile Performance API returns the same metrics day by day, with views already split between Search and Maps, desktop and mobile: four figures that don't exist in the GA4 link.
Why bother exporting, if GA4 is there?
Because GA4 keeps six months: anyone who linked their profile in June 2026 will have no year-on-year comparison in June 2027. One CSV a month in a shared folder fixes it in five minutes.
Profile insights and AI answers (what you can and can't see)
The Performance report doesn't say whether the profile was seen in a classic result, on the map or inside a generated answer: Google's help only mentions Search and Maps. On the website side, something does show.
GA4's channel page says that Organic Search also includes clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. And since 13 May 2026 GA4 has an AI Assistant channel for traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
For a local business: if ChatGPT recommends your practice and the person clicks through to your site, that visit doesn't go through the profile and won't appear in its insights. You'll find it in the AI Assistant channel. Which sources ChatGPT uses for local businesses (Google profiles, directories, websites) we looked at in our local AI visibility test; tracking it over time needs other figures, collected in AI visibility metrics.
Nobody can promise a citation. You can make sure that, when one comes, the visit doesn't end up in the wrong channel.
FAQ
It depends: usually the profile isn't verified or you're using an account that is neither owner nor manager. Google shows performance data only for verified profiles and only to the people who manage them. Some metrics, such as directions, appear only if they apply to your business.
Yes. Google's help says views, searches and actions include both organic results and Google Ads. If you run campaigns in the same area, separate the two channels with Google Ads conversions and a website link with UTMs.
No. Google counts clicks on the profile's call button. To know how many calls went through and how many became quotes you need a tracked number or your phone system's log.
No. The link brings seven profile metrics into GA4, including website clicks, but doesn't show what people do after the click. For that you need the UTM-tagged link, which also lets you tell locations apart.
In short
Profile insights count actions on the profile, not customers.
Google Ads interactions are included.
The GA4 link keeps 6 months and adds up all locations.
Only 24 of 299 Italian profiles tag their website with UTMs, and at least 9 of those land in Unassigned.
The right string keeps "google" and "organic" and uses the campaign to separate the profile.
One last idea, which we didn't find in the guides we read: put the location name in utm_content even if you have only one. The day you open a second branch, or move address, your history will already be split and you won't have to rebuild it by hand. If you want the profile, the site and GA4 to tell the same story, along with the rest of your SEO and lead generation, let's talk.
Speak soon!
