The hidden power of Google Business Profile
Adding force-multipliers to your bottom line.
Update: Google My Business is now called Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile can transform how you acquire customers online.
For many businesses, I'll go as far as saying that it's more important than their own website.
If you're in charge of growing your company's bottom line, this article will arm you with the know-how to turn your Profile into a revenue-pumping machine.
(While 10x-ing your own value in the process.)
I'll be using real world data from my own campaigns and third-party sources to illustrate just how powerful Google Business Profile has become in 2023.
Let's get started.
Google is getting greedy with its own traffic.
They don't want to send people to your website if they don't have to.
About 11 years ago - so a million in internet years - Google gave people ten blue links, along with some ads when they searched for something.
Things have changed in a big way since then.
Google has been de-prioritizing organic search results in favor of ads and what are known as "No Click Searches".
No Click Searches: Instances where people are searching on Google, only to get the information they need without needing to visit any websites.
Google understands that it can only get so aggressive in terms of prioritizing ads over organic search results.
What they've gotten very good at is getting people to stay on search results pages until they actually click an ad.
They're doing this in many ways that you've already seen - and it's happening more frequently.
Here are some examples:
This may not seem like a huge deal at first, but the growth of No Click Searches is no joke.
And it's affecting local businesses.
No Click Searches now account for 47% of all search queries.
Google's intent is to offer users as much value as possible directly within search results - so when people do something that Google can't directly answer - the chances they click an ad (so Google gets paid) increases.
Rand Fishkin, one of the original thought-leaders in SEO, held a presentation about this at a conference. Here's one of the slides that refers to this:
Business owners who rely on traffic from search engines previously just had to worry about the growing prominence of ads - as Google pushed organic results lower and lower on the page.
From the data above, it's clear we're now fighting against these ads, and the rapidly growing instances of No Click Searches.
No Click Searches on mobile: The real kicker is how No Click Searches work in combination with mobile devices. Due to the small screens, No Click Searches account for over 60% of searches in some cases.
The small screens mean that ads get even more priority on mobile.
When ads are followed by Google's efforts to keep users from clicking on organic results (answer boxes, etc) it turns into even more No Click Searches.
Here's an example of what we see when we search "mortgage rates Calgary". Normal organic results aren't even shown until the bottom of the third screen.
This illustrates the lengths Google is taking to offer people information directly in search results - so they can keep them on their pages longer - instead of having them visit your site.
That bright shiny site you paid a ton for - and are paying someone truckloads of cash to optimize for search engines?
Even if it ranks first, it's now buried on the second half of the page.
This is why so many sites are seeing decreases in their search engine traffic - even when their rankings haven't decreased.
Here's what a well respected agency owner had to say on LinkedIn.
What does this mean for your site? Should you still be paying someone to optimize it?
Listen, I'd rather not give you my opinion. We've never met and I don't know the ins and outs of your business.
Let's look at the math instead.
