SmallBusinessNewz

Google has launched a new dashboard feature for Local Business Center that lets businesses get greater insight into how customers are finding their local business listings. Best of all, it's free to use.

Your local business listing on Google looks something like this:

Users can find this by doing a regular old Google web search, or a search on Google Maps. Either way, the more data you can learn about how they found it, and about them, the more you can utilize this information to make improvements. It's classic web analytics.

With the dashboard, you can get access to data like:

- impressions
- actions
- top search queries
- zip codes where driving directions come from

That's some valuable data to have. The dashboard also lets you dig into the data using lists, maps, and graphs like the one below.


"When you log in the the LBC today, you'll find that we've already populated the dashboards for claimed listings with data from the last 30 days," says Amer Shahnawaz on the Google Blog. "After that, new information will be added every day, so you can check in often to see how things are going. We're also working hard to add more historical information, and to make this available for businesses outside the U.S. All the data we share through the dashboard will be anonymous and aggregated, to protect the privacy of Google users."

To use the dashbaord, you need to first claim your listing in the local business center. When you log in, you'll see a new "view report" link under the stats.