Indian Local Businesses To Get Boost With New Google LBC Dashboard

As a business owner in India, a local listing on Google will now ensure much more than online visibility. Businesses in India will now have information on how their listing is being searched and from where – trends that will enable businesses to make informed decisions to reach out to potential customers.

Google is introducing a new dashboard feature in the Google Local Business Center (LBC) that will provide business owners with a new level of information about how Google users are interacting with their local listings. The Local Business Center is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content of their listings in Google Search and Google Maps. With the addition of the new dashboard, the LBC will now draw upon local search data to help owners optimise their local listings and their other efforts to attract more customers.

According to Google estimates, the number of queries for local businesses is fast increasing. The LBC dashboard will initially provide business owners with the following data on that activity in Google Search and Google Maps.

* Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a search result on Google Search or Google Maps search in a given period.

* Actions: How many times users interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times users clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.

* Top search queries: Which queries led users to the business listing; for example, whether more customers are finding the listing for a cafe by searching for ’tea’ or ‘coffee’.

With the LBC dashboard, business owners will be able to identify trends, such as days of the week when interest in their business spikes, or seasonality in the types of searches that lead potential customers to their listings. Owners will also be able to better determine how changes to their listings – such as adding a video or refining their category – influence the traffic to that listing.

The LBC dashboard also allows business owners to better measure the impact of changes to associated web content or adjustments to marketing campaigns – such as a new post to the company blog, or a new advertising campaign – by measuring impressions, actions, location, and more before and after the changes.

The LBC dashboard will be pre-populated at launch with Google data from the past 30 days, and it will then be updated daily. All data available in the LBC dashboard will be anonymised and aggregated, so no individual Google user data will be shared.

The dashboard is accessible to any business owner, who has claimed his or her listing in the Local Business Center. Business owners who do not yet have an LBC account can quickly create theirs for free by visiting http://www.google.co.in/lbc