People often ask me how I know who comes to my website from Google Search vs Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), the knowledge panel to the left of Google Search. It’s a great question because there’s no way to differentiate the sources in Google Analytics without making adjustments.
There’s a trick, but for this to work you must have Google Analytics installed on your website.
The secret is to use UTM parameters, which are just short codes appended to your URL that are sent to Google Analytics to show you where the traffic came from. You can use Google’s URL Builder tool, or my UTM template, a spreadsheet that mimics the setup and keeps your links organized. This is what my spreadsheet looks like and how it works. Below, you can see what each column represents.
Go to File > Make a Copy to begin using it!
URL
This is where you place the website URL you want to track. This has to be a page on your website that’s tracked with Google Analytics or it doesn’t work.
Medium
This is a general category of where you’re posting your link. Think high level. For example, if you’re updating your website link in Google My Business, your medium is GMB (Google My Business)/GBP (Google Business Profile).
In my spreadsheet, I’ve created a dropdown for Medium to make life easier and keep naming conventions consistent. You can edit this list to fit your needs.
Source
The origin of your traffic. Going along with the example above, your source is Referral (because people are being referred organically from GMB.
You can edit this dropdown list in my spreadsheet.
Campaign Name
Campaigns are a way to categorize your marketing efforts. If I’m sharing marketing tips from my blog, my Campaign Name might be Marketing Tips (as you can see in my spreadsheet). For Google Business Profile, it’s “gmb” (because it used to be called Google My Business).
Content
The type of content you’re sending people to. This can be a literal category. If I’m sending people to a blog post about SEO, my Content column will be “seo”. In my Google My Business link, it’s “home” because I’m sending people to my homepage.
Keyword / Term
This section is optional. Use the Keyword column to describe something in your content (an article title, perhaps) or your description/comment in a post on social media/newsletter, etc. The Keyword can be helpful for you to remember what you shared.
Anatomy of a Link With UTM Parameters
This is an example of what the UTM parameters look like with the URL. You can see &utm before each section. Then you see each of the columns listed in my spreadsheet above.
When this data is sent to Google Analytics, it appears in a much more readable fashion. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
Where to Add Your UTM Link in Google Business Profile
Add it to your Google Business Profile by logging in and going to Info > Website. Then click the pencil icon and paste your new URL.
Where to Find Campaign Data in Google Analytics
If you’re using Universal Analytics (GA3), you’ll see it under Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. As you click on each campaign, you’ll see the Source/Medium. From there, you can add a Secondary Dimension (the button right above the first column in Google Analytics) for Content or Keyword to see the rest.
If you’re using GA4, you can find organic Campaign data in 2 Acquisition reports: User acquisition and Traffic acquisition.
Navigate to Reports » Acquisition (under Life cycle) > User acquisition. Then you can swap out First user medium to First user campaign.
Repeat that process in Traffic acquisition, but instead of First user campaign, swap it for Session Campaign.
That’s it! Now you can track and report on clicks from your Google Business Profile links vs your Google Search (organic) links.
If you have questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll follow up soon.
