Google Analytics Now Shows Your Business Profile Data
Google added a new integration to Google Analytics that links your Google Business Profile directly to your Analytics property, pulling local engagement data like calls, direction requests, and website clicks into the same place you already track website and app performance. For any business with a physical location or a local service area, the integration closes a gap that has existed since Google Analytics and Google Business Profile became separate products: the data about how people find and contact you on Google Search and Maps now lands next to the data about what they do once they reach your site.
The setup is quick and the payoff is practical, but the integration also comes with real limits that shape what you can actually do with the data. Here is what it brings in, how to turn it on, where it helps, and where it falls short.
Why Google Business Profile carries weight in search
Google Business Profile is the free listing that represents a business on Google Search and Google Maps, and it does a lot of heavy lifting for local visibility. When someone searches for a service near them, the results that appear in the map and the local pack (the cluster of business listings that often shows above the traditional blue links) are drawn from Business Profiles, not from websites directly. For a large share of local searches, a Business Profile is the first thing a potential customer sees, and often the place where they decide whether to call, get directions, or head to the website.
Google has said its local results are ranked on three things: relevance, which is how well a profile matches the search; distance, which is how close the business is to the searcher; and prominence, which is how well known and established the business is, based partly on information and references across the web. A complete, accurate, well-maintained Business Profile influences all three, which is why local SEO work tends to start with the profile before it touches the website. Categories, business hours, photos, reviews, and the accuracy of name, address, and phone details all feed into how often a profile shows up and how much a searcher trusts it.
The local metrics that now flow into Analytics
Once a Business Profile is linked, Google Analytics adds a dedicated Google Business Profile reporting collection that only appears when a link exists. The collection brings in aggregated metrics from every linked profile, covering the actions people take directly on the profile rather than on the website. The metrics include interactions, website clicks, calls, direction requests, messages, bookings, and menu views, presented as cards summarizing each one.
These numbers describe what happens on Google’s surfaces before a visit, which is the part of the local customer journey that website analytics has never been able to see. A call placed straight from a Business Profile, a direction request tapped in Maps, or a booking made without ever loading the site all happened outside the website, so they never showed up in Analytics. Linking the profile brings them in. One detail to flag is that Google Analytics shows every available Business Profile metric regardless of business type, which is different from the Business Profile performance dashboard, where metrics that are not relevant to your business get hidden.
Setting up the link
Setting up the link takes a few clicks in the Google Analytics Admin area, and it needs the right permissions on both sides. You need an Editor or Administrator role on the Google Analytics property, and Owner or Manager permission on the Business Profile you want to connect.
From there, the steps are short:
1. Open Admin in Google Analytics and find Product links.
2. Click Google Business Profile links, then click Link.
3. Follow the prompts to select the Business Profile or profiles you manage.
4. Review the data sharing details and confirm.
A single Analytics property can link to more than one Business Profile, which matters for businesses running multiple locations under one Analytics setup.
Where the connected data earns its place
The integration becomes useful in a few specific situations.
For a business measuring local advertising, the connected data shows whether ad spend is moving the actions that matter locally. If a campaign is meant to drive foot traffic, direction requests and calls are closer to the real outcome than website sessions, and now both appear in the same reporting view as the site data the campaign also affects. Google’s own framing points to this directly, calling out the ability to see correlations between local advertising spend and Business Profile engagement like direction clicks.
For a business running several locations, the aggregated metrics give a single read on how the whole local footprint is performing across calls, directions, and bookings, without logging into each profile separately.
For anyone trying to understand the full customer journey, the integration fills in the local first touch. A customer might find the business in Maps, tap for directions, then later visit the website to check hours or buy something. Before the integration, those looked like two unconnected events. Now the Business Profile actions and the website behavior appear in the same property, which makes the path from local discovery to website engagement easier to follow.
The limits to keep in mind
The integration comes with real limits, and they shape how much can be done with the data.
The metrics are aggregated only. If several profiles are linked, the reports show the combined total and cannot be segmented or filtered by an individual location. The Business Profile metrics also cannot be used in custom explorations, comparisons, or filtered reports, so the analysis stays fairly basic. There are no granular sharing controls either, since linking shares all of the metrics listed above with no option to share only some.
A few other constraints matter too. The integration does not support subproperties. Data retention runs to the last six months, so reports cannot display Business Profile data older than that even when the Analytics date range goes back further. And links can only be deleted from inside the Google Analytics Admin interface, by someone with Editor or Administrator rights.
Local prominence and the wider authority picture
The integration is a reporting upgrade rather than a ranking one, so it does not change how a Business Profile performs in local results. What it does is make that performance visible alongside everything else. Improving the performance still comes back to the same fundamentals: a complete and accurate profile, steady reviews, and the prominence that Google builds partly from information and references across the web.
That last factor is where local visibility connects to the broader authority work that drives search performance generally. Prominence grows when a business is mentioned, cited, and linked to across credible sites, which is the same signal that helps any page rank and helps content earn citations in AI answers. Link building and digital PR build the kind of third-party references that strengthen a brand’s standing in both local results and regular search. The new Analytics integration gives a clearer view of the local side of that picture, and seeing calls and direction requests next to website engagement makes it easier to judge whether the wider visibility work is reaching local customers.
Connecting Google Business Profile to Google Analytics is a small setup task with a useful payoff for any business that depends on local discovery. It will not replace the Business Profile performance dashboard, and the aggregated, six-month data has clear limits, but it puts the local first touch where it belongs, in the same view as the website and app data it leads into. For businesses serious about local visibility, that fuller picture more than justifies the five minutes of setup.