By Brian Pasch
Most auto dealers know that their Google My Business (GMB) listing, formerly called Google Places, is their #1 free source of referral traffic to their website. For dealers who haven’t checked lately, take a look at the number of total views on your “Google My Business (GMB)” listing since it was created. For many readers your count will be in the hundreds of thousands.
Many auto dealers in the United States see 25-50,000 views a month on their free GMB listing.
The total viewership numbers are shown directly on your Google+ page, as shown below for Pohanka Honda: 
Google My Business (GMB) Traffic Is Normally Invisible
Despite Google My Business being the #1 free source of phone calls and referral traffic to a dealer’s website, the AMOUNT of influence and traffic generated by Google My Business is hidden from Google Analytics.
Google My Business traffic is grouped into Organic Search, and I think that’s an error by Google
Google Analytics shows six channels for website traffic, that include Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search, Social, and (Other). Even though you would think that clicks from your Google My Business listing would show up as “referral” traffic, those clicks are combined in the Organic Search traffic. When you look at the details behind “organic traffic”, the clicks or calls from Google My Business are not listed.
Yes, I know that Google My Business has a “dashboard” that shows some high level click activity but it DOES NOT show what these visitors are doing on the dealership’s website. That is very important and a missing element of most digital marketing strategies.
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As the auto industry enters its busiest time of the year, and as dealers ignore vendor phone calls, it is a great time for me to refine my business goals for the upcoming year. I believe 2015 will be a very exciting year as automotive marketing companies continue to consolidate and core technology improves to serve the multi-screen shopper.
