How does Google Local Insights report impressions for multiple mappack listings (same company) showing up for one query?

[RosemaryB]

I had a client ask me a difficult question about impression reporting via Google Local Insights.  Lets say a client is a popular ice cream chain and somebody does a local brand search for "San Francisco Exotic Tasty Ice" and three locations for the same company all show up in the Google Local Pack.  Does each one of these locations receive their own impression via Google Local Insights?  Or does Google just count this as one impression for one location altogether?

Logically speaking I would think that each location would get its own impression in the insights report.  However I'm wondering if there is anything to negate that.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[seanginnaw]

Hi Rosemary,

Each business listing will accrue 1 impression each, totaling 3 impressions in your example, even if you're looking at all of them combined in the insights report. At present, there's no way of negating this which is a bit of a frustration. I'm hoping they release a more stable reporting API so that this data can be drilled down further in future.

The same can be said for the 'view photos' action for business listings - if a knowledge graph/maps listing shows, this will also count 1 'view photos' action in GMB insights, even if the user has not actually looked at business photos. This will continue to accrue +1 photo view for each time they look at the next photo.

I hope this helps.

Sean

[seanginnaw]

Also, although not directly related to your question, this was a really helpful article to get to the bottom of how GMB insight metrics are calculated.

http://www.joyannehawkins.com/interpret-google-business-gmb-insights/3/